


Sometime Through the Stars

by Smarterinabsentia



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, F/F, Russian Kara but not Red Daughter, Slow Burn Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer, Slow Burn Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:05:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 38
Words: 95,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smarterinabsentia/pseuds/Smarterinabsentia
Summary: It's 1963 and Kara Starikov is a cadet preparing for a mission in the Soviet space program. Lena Luthor, the once-disgraced daughter of the Luthor family, has worked her way up during the Khrushchev thaw to become one of the program’s chief engineers. Meanwhile, in Moscow, agent Magda (Maggie) Sawyer is a war hero, struggling to reform her arm of the KGB. But something is amiss in skies over Russia-- in a remote Siberian village, an exiled scientist, Alex Danvers, has been observing a strange anomaly in the Northern lights, a mysterious and possibly alien force that will bring all four women together under the same dark star.Note: This fic gives equal time to Supercorp and Sanvers. I enjoy writing them both.





	1. A Tolerance for Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired during a 13-hour Aeroflot ordeal where the only reprieve from the one cup wine ration and half-frozen chicken fingers was a trove of Mosfilm classics and cosmonaut blockbusters. I was going to wait on this, but I'm nearing the end of Survival Tips and that last episode and the bloody fourth poster of Mon-El just ticked me off. Survival Tips will be updated this evening.  
> I've done and will continue to do quite a bit of research, but many, many liberties have and will be taken. Consider this as much an AU of Russian Cold War history as it is for Sanvers and Supercorp. Both get equal screen time. I haven’t changed the names as I feared it would draw people out of the story, but let me know if the Americanisms are too jarring. Kara's last name is taken from her Russian counterpart in the Bombshells series.

 

Black and enduring separation 

__

__

I share equally with you.

Why weep? Give me your hand,

Promise me you will come again.

You and I are like high mountains

and we can't move closer.

Just send me word,

At midnight sometime through the stars. 

Anna Akhmatova

 

 

It was always fire.

The thatch roofs torched by the Germans as they fled the husks of villages,  the stench of burning  cordite from shells that whistled overhead like starlings. Kara Starikov remembers pushing her comrade to safety as a doorframe collapsed above them, remembers wondering, as her hands patted out the flames licking from her sleeves, why she'd barely felt a tickle of heat. 

Her comrade wondered as well. 

"Comrade Starikov," Olga coughed, her face startled and smudged with soot, "you were on fire."

There'd been good fires, too. Companionable ones around which she and her battalion whiled away the frigid nights, sipping tea brewed from birch bark and trying to ignore the distant rumble of artillery. On those nights, the women liked to play pretend: This wasn't a war. They were merely schoolgirls on an outing to pick mushrooms, or runaways en route to a glamorous prewar Moscow or Leningrad—the bolder girls still called it St. Petersburg.

But long before those fires, Kara remembers another. 

It comes to her in fragments, when she's drifting off to sleep or focused enough to forget she's being watched. She sees them standing over her, a woman who resembles her, a man who shares her broad shoulders and golden hair. They look at her, eyes warm and smiles forced, and then the woman kneels and clasps Kara's cheeks, not letting her to turn her head toward the approaching din, the sound of a universe tearing itself apart, those bright flashes of a throbbing sky that burn in her peripheral vision. 

"Go now," the woman says, and Kara feels the man place his hands on her shoulders, squeezing them with finality.

"Be brave, K'ra Zor-El" he says, "there is no more time." 

But time is all she has. 

#

The figure on the monitor was a vision of tranquility, her long hair tied back, her uniform unwrinkled and pristine despite the days and nights in the isolation chamber. Kara Starikov sat, back straight and legs crossed, in the center of the cold concrete floor and waited.

In the chamber, there were no clocks or natural light, no radio pumping in Prokofiev or the latest speech from some maundering party official. The cosmonauts never knew how long they'd be contained, a few days, a week, or in Kara's case, longer. All the better to make you crack.

Those who didn't resorted to unusual coping mechanisms. Yuri Gagarin had famously made up nonsense songs about the objects around him--"Here is a pencil, there a rag..." Others, like Gherman Titov, smuggled in a volume of Pushkin and cheated their way through the ordeal. But Kara Starikov seemed to need nothing at all. Already they were on day eleven and the cosmonaut remained a model of composure.

Lena pulled her eyes reluctantly from the monitor and gave the man next to her a smile. "I believe Congratulations are in order, Comrade J'onnz."

"For what?" The Chief Designer was still intent on the screen. He seemed far more perturbed than impressed by the young woman’s resilience. 

 Lena tilted her head. "Why the stoicism and self-denial, of course. Kara Starikov hasn't once cried out for an extra ration or a deck of playing cards. We've done it, wouldn't you say? Created the ideal Soviet citizen."

She'd meant it in jest, but she heard a rattle and looked down to see his hand shaking as he lifted his glass of tea from its saucer. It was a small tremor, one he'd likely learned to manage through years of will. Hide all signs of the gulag. Just as her father, on those brief reprieves from the sharashka, had grown a beard to conceal the gauntness in his features. 

J'onn took a sip, more to wet his lips than drink. The beverage had long gone cold and jam seeds clung to the rim of the glass. "She's certainly performed better than any of the male candidates," he said, "but I remain concerned."

"About?" Lena felt herself bristle. So, this was why he'd called her here. Not to discuss her plans for the propulsion system, but to question another woman's competence.

"Her emotional state," J'onn said. 

Lena reached up to massage her temples. Even you, she thought.

In a man, Starikov's resilience was seen as steadiness. In a woman, it was unfeminine and unfeeling. Either way, you lost. She remembered what Tereshkova and the other women cadets had gone through, the constant badgering by medics about their menstrual cycles, the fretting over how zero gravity would impact any future children. "Every time we're asked," she’d confided to Lena, cackling with conspiratorial glee, "we simply say 'irregular.' They can't pull us from a launch if they can't predict when we'll turn into ‘crazy emotional women.’" 

"Sir," she ventured, "If you don't mind, these new weight requirements for the product..." They never called the Zvezda 0, much less the Vokshod or Soyuz I or II by their names. In Star City and Baikonur, everything was referred to obliquely, as 'the product' or 'the payload,' and separate sections handled different parts of the mission in complete secrecy. "If I'm to augment the propulsion system then--"

J'onn held his hand up to silence her.  "That is a matter for engineering."

"And I'm one of your chief engineers," Lena said.

He looked down, turning the glass in his fingers. "But you also have a background in psychoanalysis, have you not?"

Lena looked up, startled by the specificity of the word. She'd studied under a student of Freud in London in the early 1950s, and might have made a career in psychiatry had her brother Lex not defected and thrown the family's fate once again into chaos. But Lillian, then newly remarried to a prominent party official, had summoned her back to Russia, reassuring her that with Stalin dead, the sky was the limit.

"You'll never believe how much things are opening up here," she said in that clipped and silvery tone. "Why I've just purchased a volume of Pasternak. Off the shelves! Come back, Lena. I need you. Russia needs you. You’ll be a pioneer in the field."

What Lena had returned to was a country where Freud's books were still banned, and where it was all Pavlov, all the time, and people were nothing more than a series of reflexes in an interconnected system of groveling to authority and slobbering over rewards. Much, she thought sourly, in the way she'd seen cadet Monelev drooling over Kara. That man was a walking reflex, not the least bent toward introspection. Even worse, he was touted as the next poster boy for the Cosmonaut Corps. It was appalling, really.  For all his good looks and genuine accomplishments, Yuri Gagarin had never exuded as such arrogance. Lena shook off the thought, annoyed to have let her mind wander in such a way. Starikov was about to fling herself into orbit. She could certainly handle herself with a boor.

As if in answer, J'onn continued. "Starikov is twice orphaned." He placed his tea glass on the counter, a careful distance from the control board and switched off the monitor. Lena felt a slight pang of disappointment as the image of Starikov fizzled into nothingness. 

  "She spent much of her childhood in state care before the war. Went straight from the Night Witches to the Zhukovsky Aviation Academy."

"Where she excelled," Lena said. 

"Where she excelled," the Chief Designer repeated. He held up his hand testily as if  to say 'that's not where I'm going.' But Lena knew what he was getting at, a relegation of her talents and skills under a mask of flattery and openness to Western ideas. 

"She isolates herself," J'onn said. "That is my concern. Not her competence. She can outfly Monelev and Schott any day, even Alexei Leonov says he's intimidated by her."

"Then why not let her be?" Lena said. "If it works for her then--"

"She's lonely, Lena." He looked her directly then, his expression drawn and almost mournful. This wasn't condescension, she realized. He was dead serious.

"We..." he turned his chair toward her and folded his hands. "We both know what it's like to lose family, to be estranged from friends. From colleagues."

Lena bit her words and nodded. She only knew vague pieces of the Chief Designer's past, that J'onn had begun as a promising young engineer, initially lauded by Stalin for his advances in rocketry until a laboratory accident resulted in a denouncement and a ten-year exile. She didn't need the details really. It was what had happened to her father, to everyone the dictator had taken under his wing. Once Stalin shined a light on you, it was only a matter of time before he'd delight in stamping it out.

"You and I," he continued, "have both clawed our way out from under and we've worked to repaired what we can, but Starikov..."

"Has no one?" Lena cut him off. "No one at all?"

J'onn nodded. "She's spoken of a sister before the war. Adoptive. But she won't speak of her much either. She is intent on distancing herself. From everyone."

Lena snorted. "I would too if I had Monelev trailing me around like a dog." She blinked in surprise at her own words. "I apologize, Sir. That was uncalled for."

But the Chief Designer laughed. “That was the truth. Honestly, I think his hanging around is part of why she shuns Schott and Borodin. I'd hoped that with your background, you might be better suited to getting her to open up."

"Well," Lena said, still feeling a flush over her outburst. “I could attempt it.” She drew in a breath and continued. "Sir, if  we could discuss the payload adjustment. Dimensions and weight aren't enough to go on. There are safety factors to consider. If I were at least to know the materials used for the outer casing, I could—"

J'onn's smile flattened and Lena felt her heart slam to a halt. She'd gone too far, perhaps given herself away, but then the older man patted her hand and pushed himself up from his seat. "You are as dedicated as you are stubborn, Comrade, and I understand your frustration. But not even I am allowed to know what 'product' is being placed aboard..." he paused, his expression bemused, "the product. The top brass certainly aren’t going to trust a former enemy of the state with that knowledge, even if they trust me to deliver it." He shoved his trembling hand into his pocket. "I have provided the Kremlin with your report on the safety specifications. They have assured me it will be taken into account."

Lena nodded, feeling a brush of welcome relief. J'onn had only picked up her concern, and had in fact given her more information than she'd hoped for.

"Thank you, Sir. I'll do what I can…with Starikov."

J'onn nodded and walked back over to the control board, flicking on the monitor to reveal the cadet, still motionless, as if the image had frozen itself to the screen. He leaned over and switched on the intercom.

"Well done, Comrade Starikov. You are free to go. Technicians prepare for release. Please note the date and time, October 14th, 1963. 10:22 am." Then he turned around to face Lena. His expression relaxed and warm. "She'll need a friendly face after that experience," he said. "Go, Lena Lionovna, welcome our cadet back into the world."

#

When Alex was a girl, before the war shoved her violently into adulthood, her father Jeremiah would take her for long walks by the Oksa river. There, he'd show her how to forage for ferns and mushrooms, or how to tell the edible dogberry from a poisonous voronet.

They were happy then, living on a repurposed estate they shared with only two families, an astronomer and a geologist. The village of Trenevosk was a bright new experiment, a budding city of scientists who would push the Russian people into the future.

"There's no telling what we'll be able to achieve," Jeremiah told her after they'd first moved. And for a brief while, that had seemed true.

Alex had loved Trenevosk, where she could run about in trousers and traipse through the woods with the other children, kids who just accepted her into their pack, and didn't have time for stereotypes about girls or boys. In the elite Moscow gymnasium of her early childhood, she'd been forced to wear dresses with scratchy collars, and face down taunts from the other girls, whose families, despite all the talk of revolution, were still clearly snug inside a bourgeois mentality.

She loved how the village was dedicated to a mission, and the way her parents' colleagues would answer her questions about meteorite alloys and drosophila and pretend, albeit somewhat condescendingly, to be impressed by her theories.

Alex remembered that time mostly as paradise and promise, until the day Jeremiah brought her to the garden.

They'd walked further that morning, down a hidden trail whose entrance he’d marked with a fallen tree branch, and into a small clearing over which a pocket of light shone through the branches above. As Alex approached, she saw that Jeremiah had weeded out the underbrush and cultivated a small patch of land inside that small square of brightness. He knelt there, the loam soaking into his trousers, and plucked something from behind the brush. Alex expected a surprise, some fruit or a rare flower, but instead he held up a tomato. Its leaves were wilted and the fruit was warped and sickly in hue. Gray.

"Look at the future," Jeremiah said, gesturing for her to come closer. Alex sank down into the dirt beside him, feeling the dew seep into her knees.He passed her the plant for examination. The petiole was wilted and nearly translucent, its leaves curled and dry despite the abundant moisture in the soil.

"From the seed stock of Comrade Lysenko," Jeremiah said. "The barefoot scientist."

"What's wrong with it?" Alex wrinkled her nose, even the smell was bad.

Jeremiah took a knife from his boot and sliced it open. The seeds were oddly spaced and its innards cobwebby like a winter persimmon.

"Lysenko thinks he can speed up the clock by exposing these plants to chemicals and radiation. If he lopped off a tiger's tail, he’d expect the cubs to come out bobtailed.”

"I don't understand," Alex said. "If he is bad at his job then why doesn't Comrade Stalin replace him?"

Jeremiah plucked another withered leaf from the plant and rolled it between his fingertips. "Because Stalin can't tell a tomato from a beet, much less how the process of vernalization works or the dangers of radiation. And neither can Comrade Lysenko. We're going to see trouble, Alex. Maybe not this year, but in the next. People are going to starve."

Alex started to speak, but there was a rustle in the trees and Jeremiah lifted his finger to his lips. Alex understood. However happy things were, there were times when her parents became pensive, lowering their voices, not in the way they did when they were having a spat, but as if there were ghosts haunting the walls or the very air around them. She hadn't realized then how close she'd been to the truth. 

He relaxed and turned back to her, hurling the rotten fruit toward the sound. Then he rose, brushing the dirt from his trousers and hands, and helped his daughter to her feet.

"So, what do we do?" Alex asked. 

"We get ready," he said, looking down at her, "quietly. We have enough land to grow our own food, and we forage and store and study ways to mitigate the effects. And when things get bad. We help. We always help." He placed a hand on her shoulder as they made their way back up the trail.

"And Alex? This is our secret."

Alex nodded and took his hand.

Doctor Alex Danvers snapped out of her reverie as a blast of icy wind pushed her back, sending the nose of her rifle skyward, and the deer she'd been hunting hurrying back into thick line of trees.

Damn it, she thought. I almost had him.

She and Jami had enough to eat. That was not a problem. As the only doctor in her small Siberian village, Alex had more than most. But they could have used the venison, and if not them, then some of her patients. The rations, when they weren’t pilfered off the trains, were slow in coming, and while the land around them was abundant, the winter months were rough on even the most comfortable citizens.

She slung the rifle over her shoulder and spat out a curse. In hindsight, it would have been hard to drag the animal back on her sled. It would have taken time, but she had done it before, albeit from a closer distance to the cottage.

She pulled the drawstrings on her hood, tucking it more tightly over her face and glanced uneasily up at the twilight. That greenish flicker on the horizon had gotten brighter in the past week, but its colors had changed. The anomaly had become infused with streaks of bright vermillion, and at its center, the whorls streaming toward the sky broke into a hexagonal pattern, far too consistent to be, as the party meteorologists had put it, “merely an atypical example of the Aurora.”

No one in the village of Balashova believed the official line either, although Alex didn't much care for their replacement of it with superstition. The Ognenniy Zmey or the fire dragon, they called it. The more religious said it was an omen from God. 

What Alex suspected was far more unsettling.

She knelt and in that last bit of light, bent down to examine a fern. Like the ones Jeremiah had shown her, this one showed signs of mutation, but not of the type she'd seen as a child. This plant was thriving, its fiddleheads a vibrant green, coiling tightly around her fingertips. They seemed to be proliferating. She'd heard the villagers remark on this, happily discussing their finds, which they planned to salt and use to season their food. Just a week ago, she'd come upon the carcass of a fox in which the spores had found a new home, their fronds crawling over tail and tufts of fur.These and other flora, she'd observed, seemed to be responding to the anomaly as they would to sunlight. "Speculation isn't science," she whispered to herself. "Don't go there."

She plucked up a piece of the plant and placed the sample in her pouch. She'd have a proper look later under a microscope. In the light, where her imagination wouldn't follow her. Now, she needed to be home.

Jami would be waiting for her. And while the child was extremely self-reliant, Alex worried about her. She'd been having trouble with some of the children at her school, in her Young Pioneers group as well. “Drones,” Jami called them in secret. Alex gave one last lingering look at the sky and turned back in the direction of Balashova.

#

When she reached the cottage, she found the door unlocked, and lowered her rifle from her shoulders. There wasn't much to worry about here, other than the occasional bear or wolf, but the war had taught her to be cautious.

She opened it to the comforting smell of ciorba on the stove and smiled as she removed her boots. Her smile dropped when she saw who was at her table. 

"What are you doing here?" Alex said, barely concealing the anger in her voice. Only for the girl, she thought. If Jami wasn't here, I'd shoot him on sight.

Max sat up and folded his hands patiently, as if it would take effort to explain the complexity of the situation. He was always so pompous, a local party mucky muck who boasted of a Moscow apartment and never failed to remind you that his place in Balashova was "just a dacha." Since learning that Alex was widowed, he'd been calling on her frequently, offering trips to the Black Sea and French perfume.

 "Your daughter went missing from her Young Pioneer troop today," he said, casting a concerned glance at the girl. "Maria Ilanovna was very worried about her, so I helped track her down. Found her wandering around in the woods near the Orlov caves." He clucked his tongue. "Dangerous place, those caves. He placed a hand to his heart. "Very troubling.”

Alex suppressed a sneer. Everyone in the village knew that Illanovna was eight months along with Max's child. She'd come to Alex's clinic six months ago, begging her to lie about it.

"My husband can't find out," she said.

“Children come early,” Alex said. She changed the due date on the form and said nothing more. She wouldn't have the woman thrown out and disgraced simply because she'd been unable to say no to a powerful party official.

"Mother," Jami said. "Come. Have something to eat."

The girl was a sturdy ten-year-old with a thicket of jet black hair and dusky skin. If she looked anything like Alex, it was in the sharpness of her features, the intelligence behind the eyes that revealed a slight hint of mischief. It was enough to halt the questions, at least. She was lucky that no one this far out knew how long her husband Dmitri had been deceased, and like Maria, she stayed vague about dates and kept her one photo of him safely locked away in a drawer. Dmitri had been killed in an industrial accident shortly after the war. She felt regret over this. But if you asked her now, Alex hadn't really wanted to marry him. 

 After the war there'd been pressure, an overwhelming desire among her compatriots to return to a quieter life-- to get married, wear dresses, to be 'women' once more. Alex hadn't wanted any of that.

But after losing her father to the gulag, then Kara, and finally her mother to the other side of the Curtain, she wanted, or thought she wanted, a safe space. A home. A child to whom she could give back what had been taken from her.

Maggie had wanted the adventure to continue.

She remembered their last night together. She was eighteen, Maggie a year older. The war had just ended, and they'd broken into that abandoned house on the outskirts of an emptied out German village. She could still feel the warmth of Maggie’s skin beneath the blankets, taste the wine she discovered tucked inside a hollow stone in the cellar.

"To the best of times," Maggie had said, and Alex laughed in surprise.

"The cold, the deprivation, our ears are still ringing from the tank shells. The best?"

Maggie answered with a vigorous nod and kissed her. Her mouth tasted sweetly of currants. " With you? Of course. Why let the adventure end?"

But the adventure was ending. Alex had seen it in the girls who spoke excitedly, even expectantly now about returning home. Had heard about it the letters that were finally getting through, telling of the victory parades from Leningrad to Vladivostok.

And there was the guilt, too. They'd survived.

"You've made me so happy," Alex said, feeling something hitch in her chest.

"I still could," Maggie said. She reached up and tucked a strand of Alex's hair behind her ears. She'd hacked it short before their final skirmish, when they'd sent a regiment of Germans packing into the mountains. It was growing back now, softening her features.

"We're girls," Alex said.

"Girls who've fought our way through a war and survived," Maggie said. "And it's not over yet. We don't have to go back and be wives. They need people to restore the peace. I’m moving on tomorrow, going to help clear things up in Radeburg and then enlisting in the NKVD. You could—”

The words dropped out of Alex like a hot stone. "I got a letter from Dmitri. He's proposed."

Alex nearly flinched, expecting Maggie's smile to disappear, but instead, the other woman just paused until she could force it even further.

"I'm happy for you."

"I want children," Alex said dumbly, feeling the strangely unfamiliar sensation of tears stinging her cheeks. How long had it been since she'd cried? She'd learned not to sometime after hurling a blanket over a row of charred bodies, after trying to stop the blood in the umpteenth gut wound or amputation.

"I know." Maggie reached up to thumb away a tear from the other woman's cheek and Alex felt her insides collapse, heard those strained, alien sobs burst forth as Maggie pulled her closer. She glanced up once to see those dark eyes shimmering briefly in the candlelight before Maggie dipped her face into her neck.

“I love you,” Alex said. “It’s not because I—"

"Shhh," Maggie said, her breath warm against Alex's skin, "then let's make the best of this. I don't ever want to forget." 


	2. Breaking Bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There will be another update today or tomorrow. It's written but I wanted to give it another once over. Thank you for your patience.

Alex ignored Max, but stopped short of throwing him out. Although he exaggerated, Lord was a prominent party official, and a few whispers to the wrong people could put them under scrutiny at a time when she needed it least. This was why she hadn’t protested her posting out here. They thought she was out of their hair, and very soon, she would be.

Jami, however, had a more immediate plan. The girl spooned up two bowls of mushroom soup and rather pointedly placed them on the countertop.

“Mother,” she said, “come eat.” She nodded at Alex, who seeing her strategy, walked over and accepted the meal. Then, the two of them, still standing, proceeded to eat and converse near the stove.

“This is very good,” Alex said.

“I used the herbs from the back garden, like you said. 

“Good.” Alex had long learned to forage and grow her own food, and with the anomaly, she was taking as few chances as she could.

 “Did you hunt?” Jami asked.

“I tried,” she said. 

They talked like that for several minutes, pretending that the interloper was merely a gnat on the other side of the window. Alex finished her bowl and placed it on the counter, then, demurely tilting her head at Max who was still fuming at the table, said, “I appreciate you helping out today, Comrade Lord. Is there anything else?”

Max glowered, and after a moment, got up from the table he’d been occupying “Eating while standing. Can you even call yourself women?”

Alex looked at Jami and shrugged. “Perhaps not.”

Jami laughed, a bit of soup catching in her throat as Max strode to the door and turned back.”You’d better keep an eye on this girl. She could get herself into trouble.”

He pulled his fur hat from the rack and trudged out into the cold. They waited in silence as the sound of his heavy tread disappeared into the night, and then, as if on cue, the two women burst into laughter.

“I wish he’d go back to that apartment he boasts of in Moscow,” Jami said.

“Or East Berlin,” said Alex. “They can have him.”

She spooned two more helpings of the soup and brought them to the table. “That said, why  _weren’t_ you in school today?”

Jami’s eyes widened as she followed her over. “There was another one of those things in the forest. I saw it up close this time. It glowed.”

Alex sat down and looked up at the girl, her expression stern. “Jami. Why?”

“They’re talking about me again.” Jami sat and began to trace her spoon around the edge of the bowl. “That I’m strange. Or I’m a liar. But I wasn’t lying, mother. I saw it. It was small and flew without wings and it wore…a light on its chest.”

Alex reached across the table and gently pressed her finger to Jami’s lips

“Listen,” she said, “you can’t go around talking about the anomaly or forest sprites or anything else. We can’t invite trouble.”

“But I saw them,” Jami said.

“I believe you,” Alex said, and she did, more than she wanted to, even if the child’s interpretation was a more fanciful version than she preferred. “Just a few more months here,” Alex said, “then my mother…” she paused, “your grandmother, will get us papers and passage out. But we need to lie low until it’s time.”

Jami nodded and Alex tugged at her ear and smiled. “I’ll have word with Maria Illanova tomorrow. Make sure this isn’t tolerated.”

Jami shrugged. “She doesn’t care.”

“I have a way to make her,” Alex said, not hiding the vindictiveness in her expression.

#

Lena heard the voices long before she reached the outer door to the chamber. Loud, male, and slurred.

Other than the rare exceptions of ceremonial dinners and pre-flight toasts, cadets were strictly forbidden from drinking during training. Unofficially, however, a successful trial in the altitude chamber allowed for a little indulgence. It was an important rite that, once completed, meant you were no longer a space-aspiring understudy, but going up. Soon. And that called for a few bottles of _Shampanskoye_.

When Lena approached the chamber entrance, she saw that Ilsa Borodin, the Zvezda’s other female cadet had been left out of festivities. Instead, waiting for Starikov were Monelev and Schott, and both men were already scandalously drunk.

Monelev saw her approach mid-swig and pulled the bottle from his lips. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jumpsuit and gave her a rakish grin. “Comrade Engineer.”

Lena shrank from the loudness of his voice and glanced down at the half-drunk bottle of champagne in his hand, its neck sticky with liquid. Schott saw her displeasure and straightened.

“Is Starikov not incredible, Comrade?” he said. “Eleven days! I was seeing flying squirrels by my fifth.”

“You’re not seeing them now?” Lena said, not without affection. Winn Schott had a good heart, and likely he wasn’t here of his own accord. Unlike the ace military pilot, Monelev, Schott was a tech in a program where such skills were still not valued in cadets. Cosmonaut missions still used manual control as the last available resort, leaving pilot autonomy only for emergency situations, and the squabbles over such contingencies were endless and absurd. This was a problem that often worked Lena into fits. What was the point of sending non-scientists into orbit when there was so much more that could be learned? Or pilots who weren’t really allowed to pilot? But here you had Schott, lucky to be going up at all up at all, and forced to veil his intelligence for the sake of Monelev’s ego.

The four of them quickly moved aside as a crew of men in grey jumpsuits hurried toward the outer airlock. Tikiev, a small man in rubber boots, stepped up to the latch, and on a command from the control room, bent down and wrapped his hands around the lever and pulled it up. The door shuddered and gasped as a whoosh of oxygenated atmosphere escaped from the chamber. Monelev and Schott began whooping and clapping.

 A woman medic shot them an angry glance. “Some consideration,” she said, “the return of stimuli must be gradual.”

Monelev ignored her and shaking his bottle, let more of the liquid splash out onto the floor. Lena made a brief face at the overpoweringly sweet stench and then forgot her irritation entirely.

Amid the cluster of technicians and medics stood Kara Starikov, who seemed to pay no mind to the latter as they lifted her into a seat and began their post-release poking and prodding. She looked so young, Lena thought, a kid. But J’onn had said she’d flown bombers in the war. She must have been a child then. Starikov’s arm lifted limply as a medic encircled it with a blood pressure cuff. Another shined a pen light into her eyes. The young cadet didn’t even flinch. She just looked past the light at her welcome party.

 “It is nice to see you, comrades,” she said.

Monelev put down the bottle and snatched up a bouquet of flowers he’d propped lazily against the wall. “Eleven days of that torture and you’re even more beautiful.”

Lena fought back a rush of bile in her throat as he strode over to the cadet and practically shoved the bouquet in her face. The woman medic glared and swatted it away. “Later,” she said.

But Kara generously reached up, her arm now free of the blood pressure gauge, and took them.

“It is kind of you, comrade,” she said, smiling almost absently as the medics unhooked their equipment and gave her some space. She pushed herself up from the chair then, her face still serene, but something was off. Her knees were trembling and Lena saw that the composure she’d witnessed through the filter of the monitor had come at a cost.

“I know,” Monelev said. He stepped back to retrieve the bottle and then went to 'help' the cadet to her feet. “I am nothing if not generous.” He slapped an arm loosely around Starikov’s shoulders and raised the bottle to her lips.

 _Idiot_ , Lena thought. Panic stuttered through her. If Kara Starikov collapsed, she’d likely undo any of the progress she’d made in the chamber, not just for herself, but for Ilsa Borodin and the other female candidates as well. She hurried over to Kara’s other side and took her by the arm. The girl’s weight sank into her almost immediately and Starikov slipped out from under Monelev as if out of a heavy, woolen coat.

“Cadets,” Lena said, shooting Schott a meaningful look, “let’s not undermine Starikov’s achievement with any more foolishness.” Starikov’s entire body seemed to be shaking now as if from hunger. Lena nodded to the medic now packing away her equipment. “She needs air. As in from outside.” The woman nodded and Schott, emboldened by Lena’s words, took Monelev by the arm and pulled him back.

“Friend,” he said. “I have this thing to show you. My collection of meteoroid alloys arrived from Krasnograd this morning. I’ve one they found frozen into the ice near Kamchatka. A beaut!”

 Lena chuckled and felt a new sense of admiration at the tech’s ability to shift moods.

“Thank you,” Kara said. The words were soft, almost inaudible, and Lena felt Starikov’s hand tighten on her arm as she walked the young cosmonaut out into the sun.

#

The Tver basilica in Moscow’s Kapotnya district had long been a refuge for street dogs and drunks. Its brick façade was blackened by industrial smog, pocked and stained by hurled bottles and detritus, and the arched windows, long stripped of their ornamentation, glowered upon the narrow streets like mournful ghosts. The place was boxed in by ugliness, enormous, sun-strangling block towers of concrete on every side, keeping the church from public view and any promise of future restoration efforts.

In the old days, it had boasted of a modest but loyal flock, helmed by one Reverend Father Danshov, who’d spoken ill of Stalin during a service. Danshov, along with most of his followers, had been promptly sent to Siberia, and the building had been passed on to the Committee for Sanitation Workers. Stalin never did things halfway. But even that Committee would opt for better pastures. 

Until a few short years ago, there had been no religious activity there at all. The Khrushchev Thaw had by no means warmed itself to theology, which was why Senior Lieutenant and case operative Maggie “Sawyer” held a mild, albeit grudging, admiration for Father Nikolai Covillev.

In addition to being smarter than most of the corrupt and dissident priests she’d dragged into Lyubyanka, the man had a great sense of style. They’d not only reoccupied this church for over a year, but he and his followers had completely renovated the interior, all under the noses of that squalid neighborhood and, to the embarrassment of her superiors, the KGB.

As she made her way into the church, she saw that the stained glass in the narthex had been restored, the entrance stocked with fresh, scented candles. The rat-gnawed carpet had been replaced in both nave and sanctuary with a vibrant red replacement. She took a seat in a pew next to a wide-eyed young couple and let her eyes fall over the painted icons and the gilded dome above. If you had been less than a devout worshipper—or a secret operative—it would have taken time to notice the differences in the imagery, those climbing the _Ladder of Divine Ascent_ were no longer besieged by demons, but rather humans trying to drag believers down to a mundane, conformist existence. In the dome overhead, she saw that the face of Christ was now blacked out in negative, his features delineated by constellations.

No wonder it was only the most trusted among the flock who were allowed to attend official services, for Covillev’s brand of religion managed to be both treasonous and sacrilegious. She blinked up at the star map above and drew a small pad from her pocket to jot down a rough sketch. It had taken her nearly six months of infiltration to receive an invite to a service. She wasn’t going to waste a minute.

She had started out by casing Moscow university, smoking cigarettes and shuffling around the edges of student groups. She had enough of a past to barter on, could reach back and find that old traumatized version of herself that would reel them in, but this was a stubborn and secretive cult. Took a month for one of Nikolai’s followers to take the bait. And that happened due to a random slip that Maggie could never acknowledge to her colleagues.

Her name was Emilia. She was beautiful. And she had caught Maggie staring at her ass.

They’d been at one of those tedious gatherings, the kind where ‘edgy’ kids  in black turtlenecks and clumsy approximations of American fashion listened to Chuck Berry on hospital X-Rays.

Emilia had introduced herself, her hand lingering a little too long on Maggie’s wrist, and Maggie, giving into the boredom that inevitably came with surveillance work, had let her mind, and her eyes, wander.

Before she could pull her eyes away, Emilia had sidled up to her, was pressing a piece of paper into her hand and whispering, “there’s nothing wrong with you, you know?”

 “I know,” Maggie said. Because she did know, became even more convinced the more people told her that there was.

The girl leaned in, her breath tickling Maggie’s ear. “Meet me at the Pokorítelyam kósmosa, near Prospect Mira. Seven. Tomorrow.”

What was a bored and lonely KGB agent to do? 

Now, she sat in the refinished wooden pew, the other new inductees sitting next to her, smiling stupidly up at the altar as if they’d just reached the front of a bread line. She heard the iron doors to the narthex closing behind her as a reverent silence fell over the room. Father Nikolai Covillev was a slight man, younger in appearance than his 43 years and looking more like a messenger boy than a priest. He maintained the traditional vestments of the Orthodox church, but on his chin was a scandalously modern goatee.

Maggie bowed her head with the others as he chanted something in Old Slavonic and lifted his hand in the sign of the ‘star.’

There was no cross, Emilia had told her one morning, tracing her fingers over Maggie’s stomach. The cross was just a bastardization of the Star of Bethlehem.

Maggie remembered forcing down a laugh at that. She wasn’t religious by any means, but the Order of the Cosmos was very good at turning straws into stars. But she suppressed her amusement and drew Emilia’s hand to her lips. “You’re a good teacher,” she said. “Tell me more.”

And Emilia _had_ taught her more, about the things Covillev was saying in front of her now, about the vast unknown, about the martyr Giordano Bruno, who first predicted life on other worlds. The Order of the Cosmos, she said, would lead the rest to see beyond Gagarin’s myopic vision and teach them to commune with the stars.

“Yuri Gagarin says you cannot see God from space,” Covillev said, eliciting a grumble of disapproval from the crowd. “But it’s hard to be a fish in water when you’re a fish in a tin can.”

There was laughter then, the worshippers clapping energetically at his words. This was part of what made Nikolai so different from the others, Maggie thought. He behaved more like a homespun American preacher than an Orthodox priest. She fought off a grimace as she spotted the expensive watch beneath his sleeve.

He gestured down at Maggie, at the new inductees who surrounded her on all sides.

“And now it is time to come forward and partake.”

An acolyte poured something crimson from a crystal bottle into a small chalice. It seemed, Maggie thought, to give off a faint glow.

Maggie rose from her seat and put on her most reverent face, one that made her laugh when she practiced it in the mirror. Then she filed out with the couple and approached the altar. The young couple would be first, and she watched uncomfortably as Covillev brought the cup to the young woman’s lips. Fear flickered briefly in her eyes, a realization made too late, as the liquid entered her mouth that raised the hackles on Maggie’s neck. She reached into her pocket and touched her pistol for support. She wouldn’t do that. She’d feign illness first, but before she could say anything, there was a loud click at the far end of the room. Maggie glanced back at the barrel of an AK-47. Several of them. The flock was surrounded. The woman choked down the liquid in surprise, some of it leaking from her mouth to the floor. Maggie turned and saw the face of junior Lieutenant Simonov. 

She’d told them to wait. It was far too early. 

“Fuck.”

It came out involuntarily and Covillev shot a glance at her before he saw what she was cursing about.

“Please stay in your seats,” Simonov yelled, “and produce your papers.”

 “We have done nothing wrong.” Father Nikolai raised his arms, but as he did so, his hand brushed against a fold in his robe, and Maggie caught the glimmer of a vial in his fingers.

Shit. She had to blow her cover. But it was too late. The bastard was their last chance. She reached into her pocket and retrieved her pistol, hitting Father Covillev squarely in the shoulder. The vial hit the floor, shattering as a small sour smelling chemical spattered the floor.

“You’re KGB,” Covillev said, his mouth agape.

Maggie just looked at the man and shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Pokorítelyam kósmosa (Monument to the Conquerers of Space) wasn't unveiled until 1964.


	3. Stateless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Maggie’s backstory is a bit more emotionally and physically brutal than initially expected.

Lena wished she could preserve the moment she saw the sun hit Kara Starikov’s face, the sheer joy and relief that washed over the cadet as the color returned to her features. That was the moment she would later recall something stirring inside her, what she would brush off initially as that rare mammalian tenderness she felt upon seeing a puppy scrabble aboard a Moscow subway, or a cat winding around her ankles. Most of the time, she doubted her ability to feel anything at all. She felt Starikov’s grip loosening as the girl straightened, but her hand stayed on her arm. 

“Better?” Lena said. 

Starikov leaned her head back. “Starving.”

“Mess won’t be open until noon, but I’ve got a few things in my quarters.”

Her room was in fact a cottage on the outskirts of the facility. Obscured by a line of fir trees, it was one of the few living spaces that hadn’t been constructed onsite. A traditional izba with a two sloped roof, it had once belonged to an overseer on an estate, and other than the installation of electricity and a phone line, had changed very little from its pre-revolution days. The walls were hewn from dark wood and decorative carvings were etched around the windows. At the center was an old brick stove, intended for both warmth and cooking, but Lena not knowledgeable about its use for the latter, had brought in her own kerosene burner.

As she led Starikov inside, she noted the room smelled of rain and wilted flowers. She felt herself redden and plucked up the wilted bouquet she’d picked in the woods three days earlier and tossed it into a bin. “I apologize for the state of this place,” she said. She cracked open the fortochka for ventilation. “I am barely here as it is, but I thought…”

She turned to see Kara Starikov. The cadet was leaning over an incongruous chaise longue Lena had placed casually against a wall. She was pushing her fingers into it, like a cat touching snow for the first time.

She glanced back at Lena, a little self-consciously. “The cot in the chamber felt more like a medieval sleeping pallet.” 

“Ah, a complaint finally,” Lena said. She offered the girl a smile. “I was beginning to wonder if you were capable of it.”

Kara’s face fell and Lena turned her attention to the stove. She hadn’t meant for it to come out as sarcasm. 

”I mean that you’ve got a lot of inner strength.” She went to the cupboard and removed a pack of chocolate Digestives and several tins of food. They were luxuries, little gifts sent from friends abroad that her stepmother ensured made it through. However tenuous their relationship after Lena’s return, Lillian knew the importance of keeping her daughter in relative comfort.  
She took an opener and began working on a tin of stew, spooning it out into a pot. Then she struck a match and lit the stove. She waved her hand lightly at the stench of the gas. 

“I just focused on my destination,” Starikov said, shrugging as if it should be clear to everyone. “The chamber is part of the process of figuring out how to get there.” 

“There,” Lena said, “you mean orbit?”

Kara looked up at the ceiling, her eyes again filling with that languid distance. She shook her head slowly. 

“Home,” she said. 

“Home,” Lena repeated.

Kara brought her gaze back, a hint of mischief in her eyes. “You know what they say, if the stars are lit…”

“…then someone must really need them?” Lena said, finishing the line from Mayakovski’s poem. 

Starikov quirked an eyebrow and nodded in appreciation. “I think…” she said, “that I am someone who really needs them.”

Lena held her gaze, thinking about J’onn’s words, about how this strange young woman had nobody else. After returning from the freedom and stimulation in London, she’d felt alien here, too. Maybe she and Starikov had more in common than she thought.

“Go sit down,” she said, gesturing to the small wooden table near the stove. 

Brought to a boil, the stew spattered Lena’s hand, and grateful for the distraction, she shifted a spoon through the contents and dished it onto a plate. Then she tore open the package of biscuits and put them on the table. “Strange bedfellows,” I know,” she said. 

But Starikov didn’t complain. The woman was practically inhaling the food, Lena saw. She quietly snatched one of the biscuits from the package in the expectation that the cadet would finish the rest off and turned back to light the samovar. Then she thought the better of it.

This situation was awkward enough. Instead, she opened the cupboard and removed a bottle of pălincă, a gift from a visiting Romanian scientist. Although Lena was neither an admirer of the drink— nor the man who’d given it to her—this situation more than called for it.  
J’onn, she thought, what were you thinking?

She took two small glasses and poured them to the brim, then downed her own as Starikov finished off the meal and poured another. She carried both glasses to the table and sat down. Kara leaned back, her body relaxing. “Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “I have a fast metabolism.”

“I can see that,” Lena said, managing a smile. She pushed the package of biscuits across the table toward her and Starikov took one, staring at it curiously before taking a bite. Her eyes went wide.

“Oh,” she said, covering her mouth. “This is good.”

“Digestives,” Lena said, feeling that warmth again at the other woman’s smile. How did someone who’d seen so much, who’d run bombing missions as a mere child, manage to come off like a kid on Christmas eve? “You can take the whole thing if you like. I can get more.” She took a sip of the brandy, slowly this time, and enjoyed the peachy burn on her tongue. Kara lifted her glass. “Zazdsrovje.” 

“To being the one alighting ‘over the rooftops each night,” Lena said.

As they touched glasses, Kara’s face broke into a wide and breathless grin that sent a spasm of unfamiliar warmth through Lena’s heart. She tossed back the brandy, hoping to quell it. 

“Do you…” she said, hesitating. 

“Do I…”

“…like music?”

A ridiculous question. But there was something so distant about Starikov that Lena wouldn’t have been surprised if the girl had never heard a note of the International. 

Kara’s lip quirked as if she’d sensed Lena’s thoughts. 

“I like music very much, Lena,” she said. 

There was a long silence between them until Lena coughed out a “good” and went over to the portable Yunost she’d purchased a few years ago. It didn't have the sound of her old Hi-Fi in London, but it kept her a little less lonely. She opened a cabinet and began flipping through her collection of records, most of them contraband—although she had several technicians in her Department begging to borrow them. There was Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, the title a mischievous callback to a past science fictional future. There was Sarah Vaughan and Elvis Presley, or maybe Elvin Jones? She remembered the medic’s talk about overstimulation and chuckled. But perhaps Starikov would prefer something a little softer. 

She pulled out a Sam Cooke album and placed it on the turntable, watching the cadet’s reaction as the mellow-toned strains of Cupid floated around them. 

“Helps me relax,” Lena said. She drummed her fingers nervously across the album cover. “I can pretend I’m not spending my days squinting at blueprints and smelling fuel exhaust.”

“American,” Kara Starikov said.

She started to sing along with the chorus. “Cupid draw back your bow...And let your arrow go…”

“You’re very good,” Lena said, unable to hide the surprise in your voice. “I didn’t know you spoke English.”

“I know a few languages,” Kara said. “I picked them up in the war. Courtesy of Captain Steve Trevor.” She made a mock salute and Lena confronted Starikov’s smile head on. The contrast between that dour, quiet girl in the chamber and the bright force in front of her was almost too much. She walked back over to the table and poured herself another shot, relieved when another decidedly unromantic song came on. 

_That's the sound of the men,  
Working on the chain, ga-ang_

“You can come here again if you like,” Lena said. 

But Kara didn’t hear her, she was listening to the lyrics, her face fixed in concentration. “How can they sound so happy if they’re in a gulag?”

Lena downed the shot. She hadn’t thought about the song that way, but it was true.

“Americans like to wrap everything up in shiny packages. Even the bad. Easier to sell it, I suppose.”

Kara Starikov shook her head, and what she said next almost had Lena reaching for another drink.

“Easier to defy it if you smile.”

Then she reached across the table and stilled the other woman’s hand with her own. 

#

Maggie had never been a believer. Sure, she grew up in Beliov, home to a rural population that by no means had caved to the Soviet suppression of religion, but as a girl Maggie only worshipped her father. She laughed at the jokes made at her still quietly pious mother’s expense, not seeing the edge to them, the intention to bring Elena Androvna low. She listened to Oscar Rodaski’s stories about uncovering sedition, about the brutal fates that awaited those who crossed the Party. She thought her father was a hero, oblivious that to most of the people around her, the NKVD Captain was a symbol of the Terror, an image that also shadowed his brash tomboy of a daughter. 

So, she didn’t believe. All of that was crazy talk. Superstition. Maggie might have been happy never to once step inside a church if it hadn’t been for Elizabeta. 

Eliza, as she was called, was the daughter of a married priest, as saucy and defiant as her father was pious, and the kind of beautiful that sent a shudder through Maggie the first time she saw her. Maggie sneered at the old women clutching their icons, at the long stupid beards on the priests. She wasn’t supposed to believe in God. She’d never even considered it, but for Eliza, she could pretend.  


Every week, when she had a few extra kopeks, she would stop into Father Andrei’s church and light a candle in the hopes of catching sight of her, an event that happened so rarely, Maggie began to consider it a miracle. Those appearances soon became an obsession, with Maggie setting them to other outcomes in her life. _If she comes,_ Maggie thought, _mother’s cow will get well. If she doesn’t, I’ll get the switch for stealing apricots from Natalia Nadrovna’s yard._ Maggie's mother, noting her daughter’s odd sullenness, did little to encourage her newfound piety. Instead she became suspicious. “This is not you, Magda. You must feel guilty about something.”  


The words seemed to reach right for what was hiding in Maggie’s heart, but she continued her visits, kept up the long string of disappointments as each time Eliza failed to appear. It was a kind of penance, she told herself. You tested yourself and you suffered, but somehow that suffering felt like a kind of beautiful, aching reward. Then one day, when Maggie was absently kicking her way through a field, she came upon Eliza, hunched out of sight and smoking a pipe.  


Maggie stood there and gaped at the girl as if she might disappear. Eliza frowned and grabbed her by the wrist.

“Idiot. Don’t stand there," she said, yanking Maggie hard down into the grass. "They’ll see."  


Maggie dropped to her knees in front of Eliza and sputtered an apology. 

“Why are you staring?" Eliza said. She lifted the pipe. "Do you want to try?”  


Maggie shook her head.  


Eliza's eye grew wide with comprehension and she leaned back her head and laughed. “You’re afraid! I thought you were the tough girl."  


_The tough girl._ Maggie balked at the girl’s words, for up until this moment she’d had no idea that Eliza even knew she existed.  


Eliza slipped an arm around Maggie and pushed the pipe to her lips.  


“Come on. Just one puff,” she said, “you’ll like it. And you won’t dare tell on me then, will you?”  


Maggie’s lips parted and she allowed the other girl to gently insert the end of the pipe. She closed her lips around it and drew in a breath, coughing instantaneously. Uncertain if she was dizzy from the smoke or the gentle touch of Eliza’s hand on her back, she let out another violent cough, knocking the pipe from Eliza’s fingers. The remainder of the tobacco spilled out into the dirt.  


“Now you’ve wasted it all,” Eliza said.  


“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, her voice rough. She glanced up at the girl, expecting her to be angry, but Eliza just laughed and kissed her on the cheek.  


“It’s nothing to worry about. Come here tomorrow and we’ll try again.”  


Maggie dropped her visits to the church and for weeks after, would meet Eliza in that same clearing, learning to smoke and drink from the bottles of wine the girl stole from her father’s store. In this hidden space, and with the alcohol loosening their tongues, they would try to frighten one another. Eliza would tell Maggie about all the worst parts in the Scriptures, about the Day of Wrath and the gnashing of teeth. And Maggie, feeling guilty for having no frightening stories of her own, began to divulge the stories her father had told her, about how traitors were tortured by the secret police, about the gulags her father had inspected, and rooms in the basements of his headquarters that were pocked with bullet holes and stained with the blood of executions. She knew she wasn’t supposed to speak of those things, Oscar had made her promise, but Eliza’s attention meant far more to her than the State. Maggie had never been happier, or perhaps, until now, she had never been happy at all.  


But one day, Eliza failed to appear, and on the next, she said nothing and only sat down in the grass and burst into tears. Maggie tried to question her, but Eliza shoved her away, so Maggie waited in silence until the other girl raised her head and wiped her face on her shawl.  


“Piotr is leaving," she said. 

The name came out of nowhere. Maggie and Eliza never talked about boys or even other girls in the village. This was their sacred space, away from the dull reality of rural life. She felt a tightening in her chest.  


“Who’s…” she asked, “who’s Piotr?”  


Eliza looked at her in disbelief. “Is that important? The Germans bombed Kiev. We’re going to war.”  


Maggie had heard the war talk, it had floated around her like the talk of the harvest or the meteorological reports that droned from the morning radio broadcasts. But she'd been so happy and the gathering darkness reflected in her parents' faces and those of the villagers around her had barely pierced her elation.  


“I know about the war,” Maggie lied, “but who’s Piotr?”  


Eliza didn’t answer. She collapsed into Maggie’s arms, and Maggie, with both a mix of confusion and jealousy and anger pulled her closer and stroked her hair. That’s when the thought slipped in. If this Piotr was enlisting, then he could be killed.  


She shook it away. She still didn’t believe in God, but that was certainly the kind of thought he would punish. Eliza stilled, her body relaxing into Maggie for a moment. Then she pulled away and looked into her eyes, that cynical expression now soft and vulnerable. Before she knew what she was doing, Maggie leaned in to kiss her on the lips. Eliza reached up and tangled her hands in Maggie’s hair and soon, they were lying in the grass, a mess of arms and legs and breath, and Maggie didn’t care about the war or God or this Piotr person one way or the other. Let the Germans bomb the two of them right here. She would have lived enough. They pulled apart, breathing heavily and Eliza reached down placed Maggie’s hand on her breast.  


Maggie started at the touch. She looked down at Eliza, hoping to see tenderness and encouragement. Instead she saw her own hesitancy reflected back as humiliation and disgust. Eliza pushed Maggie off her and brushing off her dress, stood and stalked back into the field without a word.  


Maggie would never know if it was over her own hesitation or Eliza’s own eagerness, for the two sides of shame that would confront her later had nothing to do with either.  
She didn’t see Eliza for two days after that. She stayed lost in her thoughts and self-recrimination, almost thankful for the distraction while all around her, the village shifted between poles of panic and denial.  


“It’s a border skirmish,” her mother told her. “It will resolve itself.” 

But the young men were already thinning out in the village, and her father stayed away until late into the evenings, a sign that things were far more serious. She knew if she could talk to Oscar that he would provide her with an accurate interpretation of what was happening, but the next time she saw him was when he summoned her to the shed behind the house.  


It was dark inside and smelled comfortingly of hay and lumber and manure.  


She stood at the entrance, blinking into the shadows.  
“Papa?” she called out.  


Pain shot through her as Oscar Rodaski pulled her down by the hair. She crumpled, speechless as the air fled her lungs.  


“So that’s it.”He stepped in front of her and smacked her across the face. “Father Andrei came to see me this morning,” he said. “So, that's how you show your loyalty?”

“Papa?” she said, “what have I done?”  


But Maggie knew. She had told Eliza her father’s secrets, about his interrogation techniques, had spilled story after story he’d confided in her, about captures and executions. 

Oscar struck her again, across the mouth this time. Hard. She reached up and touched her lips, felt wetness and tasted blood. 

“He called you an abomination." Oscar made quote marks in the air at the last word. He laughed and shook his head. "He claims that you have corrupted that slut he has for a daughter.”

Maggie felt herself pale. All of the pain in her body was receding, being pushed back by waves of shock. Eliza had told him? About that? “That’s not...” she said, “I didn’t— ”

“I could care less for his talk of devils,” Oscar said. He kneeled down into the earth and placed his hands on her shoulders. “We need more devils if this nation is to survive. But do you know what we do to people like you?”

“Like me?” Maggie said.

Oscar nodded, his eyes glinting in the darkness. “Faggots. Your kind are perverse. Duplicitous. You have to hide and so you keep secrets. You’re also for that reason, the easiest to break.”  


He gave her a rough shake and Maggie felt her stomach roil. 

“Like those English queers we’ve got working for us,” he continued, “gleefully spilling all their secrets. It’s always the faggots.”

Maggie had only heard that word in reference to men. She knew it had something to do with being effeminate, but she had never been girlish. In fact, Oscar had always encouraged her toughness. She felt the hot gush of tears sting her skin and saw her father shake his head in disgust. 

“See?” he said, running a rough, dirty thumb over her cheek. “You’ll never make a good agent because you’ll always have that perversion in you, and it’s just _so_ easy to exploit. You can’t be loyal to the people. You’re incapable of loyalty.”

He pinched her cheek, squeezing hard until it hurt and Maggie closed her eyes. She _had_ told Eliza his secrets. She had. For a kiss. For intimacy. To keep Eliza's attention riveted on her.  


“Godless and Stateless,” he said. “The first is a benefit, the second a loss.”

Maggie kept her eyes closed, expecting another blow, but instead, Oscar Rodaski simply pushed her back and got to his feet. “Get your things. I won't stand for sedition under my roof.”

Her mother was absent when Maggie left. She would learn later that Oscar had indulged Elena, allowing her to go to the church and make right with God. She would hear that from a boy as they sat in the back of a truck heading to the nearest enlistment headquarters. Maggie was lying, would have to continue to lie about her identity and her age, but she had nowhere else to go.

“I almost feel sorry for the girl,” the boy said. “Captain Rodaski is a right bastard. Even without the war, he’ll get a bullet to the back of the head.” He saw her shudder and reached out his hand.

“I am sorry for my rudeness” he said, “my name is Piotr.”


	4. Desirable Traits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late update. The research on this chapter took a little longer than expected. The next update is written and I'll have it up mid-week.
> 
> Trigger warning: Brief mention of Laika for whom justice will be done in a later chapter. ),:

The OKB-45 Design bureau was a drab, brutalist office building just off of Kalinin road. J’onn had hoped to keep all engineering matters in Star City, but the addition to the payload, combined with the urgent dictates of the launch window had forced the Chief Designer into a compromise.

Now, J’onn, Lena, and a several of their assistants were crowded into a dingy boardroom, smelling of cigarette smoke and pencil shavings. They sat bunched up against the gray paneling, facing down a glowering portrait of Lenin, and below him, Victor Gruskov, chief engineer of the 45 Bureau. A fiftyish man with pale skin and a paler shock of hair, Gruskov was flanked by two associates and looking the very definition of smug.

 

This was supposed to be crisis management, a problem solving session carried out in full solidarity for the sake of the program, but beneath all that talk of high frequency oscillations and the mixing of fuel and oxidizer was a rancorous struggle for dominance. The Design Bureau was Gruskov’s territory, and Gruskov was a man known for both his brilliance and an inclination to cut corners to the worst of all possible outcomes.

 

“It is not difficult, Comrade Designer,” he said, addressing J’onn. He had a sour mouth, Lena noted, and pursed his lips as if he were talking to a child. “We construct a 150 ton engine that runs on Heptyl. That will more than cover for the increase in the payload. And the burn ratio is unmatched.”

J’onn folded his arms and steeled himself. “That’s an unequivocal ‘no,’ Comrade. Heptyl may work fine with your proton rockets, but even the smallest amount is extremely toxic.”

“I am aware of that,” Gruskov said, “but you exaggerate the risks.”

 

“Do I?” J’onn said, “Why not take your imagination away from your designs for once and consider what might happen in an explosion. If it happened over Baikonur, we’d have to say goodbye to the entire facility, and if later in the flight, it could mean damage to the tune of hundreds of millions, not to mention the cost in lives, to the land.”

Gruskov, his small eyes obscured behind a pair of thick framed glasses, kept his expression neutral. “You’re assuming I haven’t considered that.” 

 _Wait_ , Lena thought. She bit her lip to keep a snide remark in place. Gruskov wasn’t arguing to save the Soviet people a few cows. He was cheap because he liked to show off and wanted to be the model of socialist efficiency. But as she had learned from her experience abroad, this cheapskatery was an equally capitalist inclination, one just as intent as lowering wages for the poor or cutting taxes that would help those in need. It was Gruskov, after all, who was responsible for one of the Soviet space program’s worst public relations failures. The launch and needless death of the dog, Laika.

It was the only time Gruskov, then at Star City, had successfully challenged J’onn’s authority. The Chief Designer had fought hard on that one; he’d argued that sending up a living creature without a means of return was not only inhumane, but a wasted opportunity. With the success of Sputnik, shouldn’t the next step be a successful return to earth? A slightly longer timeline and the program could send the Americans, still reeling from the launch of Sputnik, into a permanent tailspin.

Gruskov, however, had been appealing to the Kremlin in secret, arguing that the Chief Designer’s plan was both unfeasible and ridiculous. Equipping the Sputnik 2 with a heat shield and the means of reentry was simply an uncertain and costly bet when the Soviets had another quick and decisive victory on their hands. The Kremlin sided with Gruskov: J’onn lost the battle, and Laika, that poor mutt plucked off the streets of Moscow, her life. 

Gruskov’s victory, however, had been short lived. 

Laika went up and didn’t come down, but the program’s reputation sank faster than a meteoroid in the ocean. They were demonized both abroad and at home, in a rare show of recalcitrance from the Russian press. Gruskov was quietly transferred into military applications at Bureau 45, far enough away from Star City that he could do no further damage to the program’s reputation. Until J’onn’s rocketry designs were no longer enough to get the payload on the Zvezda 0 into orbit. 

Gruskov nodded to his assistant, a harried young woman with hair the color of iodine. She slid a blueprint out of a cardboard tube and rolled it flat across the table.  

“All you can see is disaster, Comrade. But with just a little adjustment…” He tilted his head and exhaled a thick stream of smoke through his nose, his well-manicured hands delicately smoothing out the corners of the diagram as if he were admiring a work of art. “One can factor in the contingencies. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

J’onn caught Lena’s eyes. She could tell by the hollows in his cheeks that he was furious. “By all means,” he said. “Enlighten us, Comrade.”

Gruskov bowed his head in mock humility and pressed his finger over a section of the combustion chamber. “We can take the gas flowing through the fuel pump turbine and feed it into the chamber. There’s no need to release the Heptyl into the atmosphere. Not only will that allay some of your fears, but it makes for a very good mixing with wonderful burning stability. The chances of a disruption in the chamber are minimal.”

The others in the room made noises of approval, but J’onn shook his head. “Minimal still adds up to thousands of lives if there is a contingency. When you can get that same thrust with an oxygen kerosene mixture, I’ll be listening.” 

Lena could see the growing indignance in Gruskov’s face. A clear resentment that read,  _‘it shouldn’t be you. I should be the one in your position.’_

Gruskov let loose with a sneer. “You talk of Kazakhstan. The poor neglected people while you waste our nation’s money on inefficient engines of your design. That is the height of hubris.”

She saw J’onn shake his head impatiently, he was about to reply, to raise his voice. _Now,_  she thought. She lifted her hand. “If I may speak, comrades.”

The others in the room turned to her as if she’d dragged them from the last crucial minutes of a soccer match. She paused for a minute and then continued, “I’ve another solution.”

 J’onn’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly and Lena swore she could hear the words in her head.  _What are you up to, Lena Lionelovna?_

“Go ahead, Comrade Luthor?” he said. 

Gruskov leaned back and blatantly rolled his eyes, but Lena could see that his assistant was regarding her with fascination. She reached down and pulled her briefcase off the chair beside her. Then she snapped it open and removed several diagrams, unfolding them over Gruskov’s augmentations.

“It’s never made much sense to me,” she said. “We launch from Kazakhstan because we have space and the freedom and the secrecy to do what we like. Yet we do not take advantage of that space from a design standpoint. But here,” she gestured to a diagram of a multi-stage rocket. It was J’onn’s N-1 plan, the one he hoped to get to the moon, but the streamlined angular craft now sloped downward into a broader lift-off chamber. “I know you prefer cluster engines, Comrade J’onnz, but we could avail ourselves to larger diameter in the lift off stage, 60-atmosphere pressure with a thick film cooling layer,” Lena said, “a hybrid of sorts.”

All eyes followed her as she stood and jostled her way over to the chalkboard at end of the room. She picked up the nub of a broken piece and began writing.

“Calculate the initial mass,” she said, raising her voice sharply over the murmurs that arisen in her brief silence. “Make the requisite number of engines with the total thrust needed to lift that initial mass and you’ve got a fairly straightforward solution to the payload problem.”

“This is a hybrid from the American designs,” J’onn said. “The Saturn rocket.” His eyes were wide, incredulous, but Lena couldn’t tell if he was furious or fascinated. 

“It is,” Lena said, her heart pounding. “Kennedy talked about the moon, and you have promised to beat the Americans there. Why not design the current product with those ambitions in mind, Comrade J’onnz. As you so eloquently argued about the Sputnik 2, there is no reason we should limit ourselves. If space flight is to be the future, we need to have our minds in that future as well.”

“As if,” Gruskov sneered, “we had resources of the Americans.”

“Oh, but we do,” Lena said. “Perhaps you are not being resourceful enough, Comrade Gruskov. We have all the same materials at hand. Americans use copper pipes in their combustion chambers, we use ribbed copper walls. It’s not a matter of resources. It’s a matter of proportion and shape. Nothing in those designs is out of our reach, and we can innovate, my friends. Make them even better.”

Lena looked up to see both J’onn and the red headed woman, their eyes were flicking back and forth between Lena and calculations on the board. 

“Pure adventurism,” Gruskov snorted.

J’onn straightened, the tension leaving his body as he let out a surprised and breathy laugh. “Do you know the difference between reasonable-risk taking and reckless adventurism, Comrade Gruskov?”

Gruskov didn’t answer. He removed his pack of cigarettes from his shirt sleeve and tapped one out. His assistant swallowed her elation and lit it for him. 

“If you pull it off, it’s a reasonable risk,” J’onn said, “and if you don’t? Now, that’s adventurism. Comrade Gruskov, your input has been invaluable. But keeping the people and the environment of Kazakhstan safe should remain as much of a priority for the program as manned exploration. It’s the least we can do.” He turned to Lena, nodding toward the door. “Comrade Luthor, I’d like you to explore this. I need a complete report with both a timeline and costs.”

Lena felt her heart slow as the nub of chalk snapped apart between her fingers. This had gone far better than she’d expected, and with J’onn’s confidence in her restored, she might be able to learn more about the payload itself. 

#

Triggering a mutation, Alex thought,  _that_  was the easy part. She’d done it hundreds of times in the laboratories at the Lanskov Institute of Cytology and Genetics.  It was the detection that was the hard part, particularly of a desirable trait.

This was why this plethora of such attributes, loudly visible through the naked eye in the flora around Balashova was both ironic and frustrating. Despite the end of summer, many of the deciduous trees of the taiga were still a vibrant green, the stems on the plants plentiful and stocky, as if grown in carefully treated soil.

Without access to the electron microscopes at her old post, however, she was forced to rely on the old Model S in her lab and something infuriatingly close to guesswork. She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and bent her head into the eyepiece. The fern was one of many samples of a variety she’d collected in the region, all whose outward characteristics seemed to be healthy. Aggressively so. 

On a cellular level, though, there was definitely something wrong—or off, at least. Most of the samples Alex had collected showed attributes of nonviability, the dyes had easily penetrated the cell membranes, a sure sign of plant death. Yet, there they were, fragrant and lush, their leaves the summery green of spinach. 

She thought about how the villagers waxed ecstatic about the flavorful berries, the soft ferns, and mushrooms they still collected from the forests despite the encroaching cold and a shudder passed through her. Flora was far hardier to the effects of radiation than fauna--or human beings. “It’s as if they remember,” Jeremiah had said to her once, “when plants were evolving, radioactivity was far stronger presence. The plants adapt because somewhere in their cells they can remember it. Dogs? Cats? Humans? We’re not going to be so lucky.”

But from what she could see in her patients, no one seemed to be adversely affected. Indeed, her clinic had been growing steadily quieter over the past few months, a fact she attributed more to the return of a popular faith healer from a labor camp, not to mention the rumors that often swirled around Alex and her daughter.

Since bringing Jami to Balashova two years ago, Alex had overheard many an absurdity: that she was an ear for the party, that she was a bourgeois spy who’d snuck across the Finnish border—in others, the stories she found most hilarious, she was a willful homewrecker, springing her claws into all of the village’s unavailable men. 

_If only I liked any of them_ , she thought. _Available or not._ But if there was one realization that had crept over her since her marriage and subsequent widowhood, it was that she didn’t take to men at all. 

She raised her head and jotted down her observations in a small, leather bound notebook she kept locked in a drawer. She was hoping to collect as much information as possible on the anomaly before Eliza came through with papers for her and Jami. With the resources she had now, her research would be far from impressive to those in the West, but she hoped it was enough for them to listen.

The door to the clinic creaked open, ushering in a blast of cold wind from outside. The room was a hastily built addition to the cabin she and Jami shared, its walls thin and the windows rattling against cold Siberian air. But Alex liked the cold, especially when she was working. It kept her mind alert and the environment comparatively sterile. 

She glanced up to see Jami, dressed in heavy boots and a fur coat far too large for her skinny, ten-year-old frame. Alex had offered to get her a proper size on the black market the next time they went into Vyborg or made the trek to Leningrad, but Jami had demurred at the idea. “The coat is warm,” she said. She could “hide things under it”--like she was doing now.

Alex’s eyes narrowed when she saw the lump under her daughter’s coat. “What is it?”

Jami lifted her dark eyes and smiled innocently as she pulled out a metal case, holding it blithely up by the handle. “I rescued a soldering iron from Mishin’s shop,” she said. “We can finish that circuit board now.”

They’d been patching together a Geiger counter, a rudimentary model, but until Alex had one, she couldn’t even begin to theorize about the anomaly’s effects. Fortunately, Jami was as adept at building and fixing things as she was at taking what was needed. She’d been helping her mother gather the parts, and had even snatched a cathode tube from a broken television set at her school.

“Jami,” Alex said, her voice stern, but a smile showed through her reserve.

The girl shrugged and placed the case on the stool next to Alex. “He won’t miss it. He was passed out. Positively stank of potato vodka. I’ve probably saved him from burning his shop down.”

Alex skimmed a hand through the girl’s hair. “You’ll make sure to unrescue it tomorrow.”

“Of course,” Jami said. 

“Thank you.” Alex leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you.”

Jami looked up at her, smiling with a mix of tenderness and bemusement. “I love you, too, Mama.”

It had taken them both a while to get there, to the endearments, to Jami’s addressing Alex by that name. When she’d first taken her in, the girl was a feisty and terrified four-year-old, newly plucked from a state orphanage in Leningrad in which she’d barely had time to settle. 

 “An accident,” the chief matron had said. “Factory explosion. Both of them. Gone like that.”

But Alex had never found records of said accident, and she suspected from Jami’s troubled disposition, from the lack of memories of her parents and what had befallen them, that their fate had been much darker. The Terror had been long over by the time Alex took her in. Stalin’s last attempt with the Doctors’ Plot had ended with his death and the doctors’ subsequent release, but persecution of those who didn’t toe the line certainly hadn’t, and there was something about the girl’s fierceness, the ragged hostility she showed Alex in those first terrible months that spoke of trauma. 

Jami vaguely remembered her parents--their names, a song her mother had sung to her, her favorite foods. And as with Alex’s sister, also long gone, she had always tried to encourage the girl to talk about them. It had helped Kara remember more, why not Jami? But even more importantly, Alex had wanted to show the girl that she had never intended to replace them.

Adoption was heavily encouraged in the Soviet Union by then; the orphanages so overcrowded that Alex’s widowed status hadn’t posed a problem. But despite the ease to the process, Jami’s acceptance of her new situation had been the opposite.

There’d been the crying jags, the tantrums, the attempts—by the then five year old—to break out through the 7th story window of Alex’s Leningrad apartment. Then there were the looks the girl gave her, of suspicion and mistrust. It was as if Alex had murdered Jami’s parents herself. The rejection stung, but it forced her to reconsider her motivations: She’d done it because she was lonely. She’d wanted her life to mean something, had wanted a semblance of the family that had been torn away from her during the years of state persecution and war. But all of that was entirely bound up in her own desires. She’d never considered what it meant for the girl beyond the offered security and some vague notion of love, and when she finally realized this, Alex went pale with shame. She couldn’t force Jami into a role she hadn’t asked for. All she could do was provide for her and listen, and help her heal on her own terms.

Things changed after that. Slowly. After a few more months, they got used to each other, and after a few years and a million more mistakes, that détente turned into a grudging affection, and then love.

It wasn’t the instinctive love of a parent and child, but most of the time it felt like something better. She had earned it, would have to continue to earn it, and in a sense, they’d become more than family. They were equals. Partners in crime.

“I’ve got this idea,” Jami said, “if we can alter the circuits just so, we can expand its detection of background radiation.” 

“You’ve gotten into the manuals, haven’t you?” Alex said. 

Jami grinned and Alex winced, vaguely remembering another selfish longing that had factored into her decision: the glint in the girl's eyes, and those dimples that never failed to remind her of a life, of a family, she might once have shared with another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gruskov is very loosely based on Valentin Glushko, who did have an acrimonious falling out with Chief Designer Sergei Korelev over the use of Heptyl, a truly nasty substance that was still poisoning the steppe as late as 2014. Glushko had nothing to do with poor Laika.  
> The line about adventurism was a real quote from Sergei Korelev, the Soviets’ very own space dad.


	5. Out of the Sky

 

“Get him a medic,” Maggie shouted to the operative now bent over Covillev. The priest was pale, propped up against the Ambon step, his hand clamped lazily over his shoulder wound. Maggie looked at him pointedly and kicked away the vial.

“We’ll talk later,” she said.

Covillev, his expression calm, merely nodded as if they’d made an appointment to go over a meeting agenda. Then Maggie, nearly snarling, swatted back the curtain over the door and stepped into the back room of the church. Waiting for her was junior case operative Ivan Arkov, a little man in a tight-fitting jacket and a pencil thin mustache that mimicked the thin strip of hair he kept veiled under a hat.

“You,” she said, looking him up and down. “Of. Fucking. Course.”

Arkov didn’t share her rank; he’d been transferred from the 5th Directorate, demoted for doing exactly what he was doing now-- getting on the coattails of an investigation and screwing everything up. He looked back at her with a studied calm, his hands folded officiously as Maggie closed the distance between them.

“This was _my_ operation,” she said, “You didn’t have the authority to call in a squad.”

“I don’t?” Arkov reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a warrant, stamped with the seal of the 2nd Directorate. “Not even when there’s a strong possibility of violent insurrection?”

Maggie wanted to spit. She wanted to nail Arkov to one of the icons of St. Paul now glowering at her from the back wall. “Idiot. What Covillev has are connections, to American recruiters, to Cuban operatives, to Soviets who’d do us harm, but you went the route of a Trotsky conspiracy theorist. What an imagination.”

“I must say this is very odd place to find you, Sawyer.”

Maggie turned back, relieved to see the mountainous frame of Pavel Vudvick blocking the doorway. A giant of a man, Vudvick initially came off as lumbering and thick, until he got you into an interrogation room and had you spilling faster than a Dnieper flood.

He was a crack operative, sharply intelligent and more than a little scary, and, in a place where trust was a luxury, one of the only operatives Maggie called friend.

It had been Vudvick, after all, who’d given Maggie that nickname after she’d singlehandedly rescued a botched prisoner exchange, paddling the target across the Narva on a makeshift raft.

“Sawyer,” he’d called her.

“Wrong book,” Maggie said.

“Ah,” Vudvick had laughed and flashed a beaten up copy of _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court_ from inside his coat, “and samizdat Sawyer at that.”

Vudvick had been an illegal operative abroad in the early 1950s, a boring lonely exercise at a time when Joseph McCarthy’s exaggerations of Soviet spies were in inverse proportion to the actual number. Books had been his only outlet. Often, they were Maggie’s, too.

Vudvick liked that about her, her curiosity, her openness to other cultures. That was what made a good agent in an era when most of Homo Sovieticus would have been lost as to how to put condiments on a hamburger.

“And I was just starting to like the place,” Maggie started, but Arkov spoke over her, approaching Vudvick like a dog nosing into another’s food bowl. “Captain,” he said, once again taking out the order. “I received notice from an informant that Covillev and his disciples were moving a supply of munitions from a factory in Lemborsk-- AK-47s, Dragunovs. He was planning a massive insurrection at the October Revolution parade.”

With that, the doors to the storage rooms swung open and several bulky men began hauling in boxes. “He was keeping his stockpile here,” Arkov said.

Vudvick shrugged. “We will see.”

Arkov started as one of the men placed a box on the table with a heavy thud. “Be careful! They might contain explosives.”

The young man’s eyes went wide and he stepped back. “I am sorry, Comrade.”

Maggie narrowed her eyes.  She smelled something, a tinge of sweetness, and that’s when she glanced down and saw that one of the corners of the box was sticky and red.  

“Explosives, huh?” Maggie said. “Why don’t we take a look?”

“We should wait until we get those back to headquarters,” Arkov said. 

Maggie pulled a knife from her pocket and tugged it open. “Nah,” she said, directing her gaze toward Vudvick, who nodded. “Let’s peek. Go ahead,” she said to the operatives. “You can step away if you’re scared.”

With that, Vudvick stepped forward, placing his large hands on either side of the box to steady it as Maggie brought down the blade.

“They could be boobytrapped,” Arkov said. “What are you doing?”

He reached up, shielding his face as Maggie slid the knife easily through the material.  Then she and Vudvick both pressed their fingers through the slits in the cardboard and pulled.

The only thing exploding from the box was a cloud of fruit flies. For that was all that was in the box. Fruit. Brightly colored and oddly shaped. Not anything you’d recognize. Certainly not anything you’d find in Russia--or Europe for that matter. Gourds and tuber-shaped objects, in colors so strange they appeared both appetizing and repulsive.

Maggie, now gleeful, snatched up a smaller piece and tossed it into the air. “Boo!” she said, catching it. “Captain, educate me, please. What make of rifle do you think these are?”

Vudvick raised his eyebrows and brought a hand to his chin. “A very clever one, Sawyer. You can spit hundreds of seeds at your enemy at once.”

 “This is only one box,” Arkov sputtered.

“Then by all means,” Maggie said, “let us open them all.”

She was still fuming, but Arkov’s humiliation in front of a superior officer was almost worth it. She polished the fruit, a purplish orb with streaks of ochre, on her lapel and sniffed it. The thing was fragrant with a sweetness and a mild pungency that reminded her of the spices in her mother’s kitchen and she was half-tempted to take a bite. But she didn’t tamper. She’d seen too many fellow operatives do that, and there’d been her father, boasting about it whenever he’d needed to trump up a charge of sabotage or extract a confession. How many had Oscar sent to the gulags? How many had he murdered? Maggie had a responsibility to be as far from him as possible. She could do that and still remain loyal to the state.  

 _Just one of these boxes,”_ she thought wistfully, _“could bring in a month’s worth of rations on the black market_.”

 

#

1941

What Alex first noticed beyond the churning in her stomach was the tear in woman’s uniform. It was in the shoulder, likely where a bullet had strafed it, and was stitched together with red and gold thread that curled around the charred cloth like a flame.

She fixed her eyes on it, did not want to look anywhere else, for the two women were awkwardly pressed against each other. They’d been packed onto a boat of survivors, now fleeing the Panzer divisions that were edging their way toward Moscow. Reinforcements awaited down the river, reinforcements that with a little luck, would help them stall the invaders’ progress. The two of them had been like this for hours, and Alex reminded herself that at the very least, it was warm, that without the proximity of other bodies, she’d likely be numb and delirious from hypothermia. She kept her eyes down, tracing them over the incongruous glimmer in the muted green cloth, and then on toward the frayed sleeves, the gentle hands that reached up to steady them both as the boat rocked. They were picking up speed now, and Alex could hear the waves lashing the boat in protest. Her stomach sympathized.

 “Oh,” Alex said. She sucking in a breath and glanced up to meet the other woman’s eyes, “thank you.”  

“It’s fine,” the woman said. She was far younger than Alex had assumed. She must have still been in in her teens, but her eyes, despite the warmth, were tempered with stoicism. That's when Alex’s eyes flicked down to her other shoulder, to the golden strap of a Junior Lieutenant.

“I—” She jerked her hand up, attempting an awkward salute. The man squashed next to her muttered out a curse as she swiped him across the elbow.

“Really, it’s fine,” the woman said, “kind of hard to do that right now. You new?”

Alex nodded.  _New_. If one could call it that. More like green, naive, and practically useless. It was only a two months ago when she’d been evacuated, a month since she’d enlisted, but it felt like a year. That didn't matter, however. All the new recruits showed it on their faces, in their fearful glances and doe-eyed clumsiness.

Another wave hit the boat and Alex closed her eyes, swallowing back the bile.

She felt the lieutenant take her arm again, this time giving it a gentle squeeze. 

“Hey,” she heard her say, “you okay?” 

_You okay?_

What an odd question. Since the evacuation, after Eliza had gone missing and left her alone to enlist, she hadn’t heard a single question about her state.

 “How many mistakes does a recruit make?” her commanding officer had screamed when she’d dropped an ammunition haul into a creek bed.

“Just one, Sir.”

“ _That_  was your one,” he said, and Alex hadn’t forgotten, not after he’d sent her to clean the barracks, to haul lumber in a hastily gathered logging crew, and not after the shelling started and she came across that same officer lying, eyes open in the mud.He’d made his point. In life and in death. So, to hear this sudden question was a shock, and for a brief moment, she wondered if she’d slipped into another world. She opened her eyes again and saw the woman regarding her with curiosity and concern. The hint of a smile tucked at her lips.

“I…” Alex said, nodding rapidly, “I came from Biriov.” She let her eyes graze over the softness in the other woman's features, the tress of dark hair that had fallen from her cap.

“Ah,” she said, “I heard that was bad.”

Alex nodded again. “It was—” she was about to speak, to let loose what had happened, but the boat roiled again and with it, her stomach. She leaned forward, feeling the raw taste of acid rising in her throat.  

“Easy,” the lieutenant said, “how about we move you to where you can get some air?”

Alex didn’t know how it happened, but somehow she managed to push the two of them through that suffocating, immobile crowd to the railing. She kept her hands on Alex’s waist, offering warmth and steady support as Alex leaned over into the grey blue waves of the Moskva, drinking in the cold air as if she hadn’t breathed in days. A mist was thick over the water that morning, and the air, while tainted with the smell of oil and refuse, was cool and bracing. 

The woman slid her hands and away and reached out. “Lieutenant Magda Rodaski. Maggie, if you like.”

 “Private Alex Danvers," Alex said, turning to clasp her hand.

Maggie tilted her head. “Danvers, huh. Sounds foreign.”

Alex hesitated. Had her first impression been wrong? Was this woman one of those rabid Stalinists set on cross examining anyone for a lack of Russianness? But the tone was curious, not condemnatory. She took a deep breath and answered, “My grandfather was British, ” Alex said, “a correspondent during the famine of 1891. He got mad, decided to stay on and help.”

“Poor bastard,” Maggie said, and Alex chuckled with surprise and relief.

“You should--you should really talk to my mother. My family’s been through a lot. Like everybody, of course, but not much to be afraid of, I guess.”

A gust of wind hit them and Alex found herself shuddering violently. Maggie took her by the shoulders and turned her gently back toward the river. Alex let herself sink into her, enjoying a fleeting sense of security.

“Easy,” Maggie said. “Just breathe for a bit. No need to talk.”

Y-you see a lot of action?”  Alex asked, looking back at her. She liked looking at her. Maggie smiled circumspectly. “Might even tell you about it sometime.”

Her eyes were focused on something in the distance and Alex glanced up in the same direction, saw the three crosses growing larger on the horizon just as a low and dreadful hum sounded from the sky. Maggie was pulling her backward now into the quickly receding crowd. The other soldiers were scattering from the railing.

 “Messerschmitt!” 

One voice. That was all that was needed to send the above deck crowd into panic.  Maggie stopped pulling and instead put her weight on Alex, pushing her to the ground as the first rattle of bullets came. Alex heard them pinging off the sides of the boat, heard the muted cry of a man, who just seconds ago had stepped on her ankle during the stampede.

As Maggie pulled her up, Alex saw him, his face pressed against the mud-tracked deck, blood pouring from a hole beneath his right eye.

“Come on!” she said, “they’ll come back around. We have to get below deck.”

Alex heard the rotors throb as the planes turned and began another descent. They had seconds, but as she stood, the boat rocked violently and the smell of smoke from the damaged, overspent engine stung her eyes. Now there were people pushing in the opposite direction, bashing violently into them as they hurried back toward the railing, hoisting their legs over the side, sometimes leaping headfirst into the water.

 “Deserters!” someone cried, “Come back, you cowards!”

This insult didn’t deter them. Alex looked up, saw Maggie’s eyes follow a young, hard-faced sergeant as he unslung his rifle and aimed it over the railing toward a figure flailing desperately in the water. The recruit was swimming furiously toward the shore, battling both the tide and the pull of the boat. The man fired once, and Alex saw the swimmer’s body jerk against the waves before he sank into a spray of foam. She heard the screams and the splashes as others, many, many others, hit in the water even as a fresh hail of bullets spattered the deck. The sergeant, now joined by a compatriot, was oblivious to the danger, methodically firing on the deserters as they fought against the water.  

“Come on,” Maggie said again and Alex straightened, reaching out for the woman who’d gotten separated from her in the chaos. There was a loud burst as a bomb exploded in the water, sending the boat into a near capsize, and Alex, looked down incredulously, saw her heels sliding along the deck like skiis as she tumbled over the railing into the freezing waters of the Moskva river. 

She felt the cold instantly suffuse her body, blinked into the darkness as she fought her way to the surface. The boat had stopped now, a thick trail of smoke spiraling up from its engine and Alex began a mad swim toward the starboard side.  She could make it. If she kept going, she could make it. But as she reached out, her fingers nearly brushing against the rusted paint, she looked up into the barrel of a gun.

 “No,” she said, “I didn’t—”

She saw the sergeant's eyes on her, cold and precise,  and she reached up, pleading, even as another wave lapped over her and the water trickled into her throat. “I—”

She saw Maggie then, swinging her fist into the man's face. She leaped onto his back, yanking his rifle skyward as fell against the deck.

“You fucking idiot! Stop!” Maggie yelled, “she fell in!”

Then Maggie was leaning over the railing, her hand outstretched, those once mirthful eyes revealing something close to desperate. Alex spat out another gulp of water and kicked herself up, clasping the other woman’s hand. With her other hand, she gained purchase on the railing and Maggie hoisted her the rest of the way. Then, Alex collapsed, wet and spent and shivering on top of the other woman. They lay there for a moment, both of them breathing hard, barely noticing the explosions, the sputtering rotors and whoops of joy, as the anti-aircraft gunners on the shore brought down the planes.

"You..." Alex reached down and smoothed a strand of dark hair from Maggie’s forehead. _You are so beautiful._ She tried to shake off the thought, but it had lodged in her head like a piece of shrapnel. The other woman’s face contorted in pain.

“Didn’t know you were so heavy, Danvers."

“Oh,” Alex said, sliding off her, feeling her face go hot even as the rest of her body shivered with cold.

“No worries. I think I pulled something is all,” Maggie said, sitting up.

Alex got to her knees and pressed her fingers into Maggie’s back, her shoulder blades, studying the other woman's face as tugged up her arm. “Does that hurt?”

“No,” Maggie said, “just sore.”

“Nothing’s dislocated then,” Alex said, “likely just a sprain.”

“You a nurse?” Maggie said.

Alex smiled and felt herself blushing again. “A doctor, or I was going to be. I was in medical school before we evacuated."

Maggie gave her an appreciative glance. “That’s young for that kind of training.”

“My mother was… _is_ a doctor. She started me early.” Alex's eyes went wide. "Bozhe moi. I- I didn't even thank you. You saved me. You saved my life."

Maggie reached up and touched the awkward, stammering girl on the cheek. “That’s what we do here, Comrade Danvers,” she said, “I’ve no doubt you’ll return the favor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update took a little longer than expected. Blaming the markapalooza and general inexperience with writing battle scenes. Thanks for reading. (;


	6. Mass Squared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is part of a much longer update, but I wanted to get this section up. Will proofread the rest and get it up midweek after I update Survival Tips.  
> Very mild warning for Supercorp fans--Jack Spheer. Supercorp is endgame, however. That's a promise or Stalin's mustache will haunt me.

The instructions had been detailed and inflexible: Monday’s edition of Pravda, folded so that edition’s full-color feature on ‘Moscow fashions’ was in clear view from a distance of ten yards; the weight and dimensions of the payload jotted over the scorecard on the Sports page, disguised as player stats. Any other information would be scrawled casually over the page 7 cartoon of Boris the Bear, as if the reader were merely talking back to the artist.

_You’re not funny._

_But it is funny_ , Lena thought. _And terrifying. And beyond absurd._

Why had Miklos chosen this place? Despite the early hour, Red Square was already filling up, with babushkas selling bread loaves and bolts of lace, with people lining up to buy Glavholod ice cream at half the price of the exorbitant GUM department store that ran adjacent to the Square. She passed a young couple, holding hands; a man and his daughter, hurrying in the direction of the Lenin Memorial.

 _Visiting a corpse_ , Lena thought. _To each their own._

The first snow had yet to fall, but already she could feel it, that shift in the wind as it went from brisk to biting. She fastened the top button of her fur coat and tugged her hat more snugly over her head, careful not to pull it all the way down. She needed to hear if someone was behind her.

She slipped her hand inside her coat and tugged at the folded edition of the newspaper. She wasn’t to take it out until she saw him. He’d be wearing a green jacket, leaning against the left side of the Monument to Marshal Zhukov, and only when he straightened would Lena begin her approach. 

What she had wasn’t much to offer, but it was enough and vitally important. ‘Top brass,’ J’onn had said, ‘military.’ And despite her takedown of him at the Bureau the day before, Victor Gruskov’s confidence told her that he was likely more involved with the Zvezda’s launch than J’onn knew.  Whatever was in that payload wasn’t solely in the interest of science or exploration, and a payload of that weight and size could mean one of several terrifying possibilities.

As a student of aerospace engineering, Lena had encountered a history of sinister plans that had never been brought to fruition. There’d been the Nazi plans for Silbervogel, a suborbital bomber that would rain nuclear hell down on Manhattan, and Von Braun’s lunatic plans to stockpile the moon with a nuclear arsenal. All were as fanciful as they were unfeasible, but Victor Gruskov’s rocket experiments weren't merely intent on sending ICBMs across oceans, but on launching them directly from satellites where they might re-enter the atmosphere undetected. Their targets would be devastated before the missiles were barely a blip on their monitors.

What she did now, Lena told herself, was neither treason nor sabotage. It was a long game, for both the integrity of the program and the survival of Soviet society. And, now that she had J’onn’s trust, she was going to make sure that the strides the Chief Designer had made for humanity were not going to be twisted for such monstrous purposes. Her hybrid design, she hoped, might just be capable of hiding mechanism in the design, a hidden glitch that could disable those purposes without compromising the safety of the cosmonauts.

And _there_? That was another problem--her warming connection to Starikov. Certainly, the cadets were equally in the dark about what they were bringing on board, but there were ways, especially now that J'onn was encouraging a friendship, that she might glean more information from the girl, ways she knew would leave her all the more vulnerable.

Jack Spheer had been the first cut her open and the first to approach her about operative work. An ex-lover from her London days, he’d come to Moscow State University on an exchange to teach Information Theory. To Lillian’s fury, they started up again almost immediately, although Lena wondered if her motivation came less from the very real feelings she’d had for him in London than a desire to rebel. Since returning to Russia, she had been running along parallel tracks of success and dissolution. _Perhaps he’ll be my way out_ , she thought, and then felt sick inside for wanting to rely on a man. But Jack—dear, sweet Jack—there was no way she could see him as anything other than sincere. Until the day he asked her to betray her country. 

She remembered that morning. They were in her apartment, a high-rise that looked down on the spot where the erstwhile Cathedral of Christ the Savior had once stood, its golden domes glinting even through the long, dark winter months. It had been demolished in 1931, ostensibly to provide space for the grandiose Palace of the Soviets, another fancy that was never to be. Now, instead of a workers' palace, Moscow was graced with the Soviet Union’s largest outdoor swimming pool, heated even in winter, the steam rose up from that blue-grey cauldron and sent a perpetual haze over its surroundings.

Lena remembered staring down at the pool, her hands clenched in the pockets of her robe as Jack sputtered at her, mystified, even surprised that she would react so poorly.

 “Lena,” he said. He edged off the bed, wrapping the sheet around him, stumbling over it as he crossed the room. “Of course, it’s you I want. For God’s sake. Do you think I was playing?”

“Not at all. I think you were very serious about lying to me,” she said, “and I don’t believe in God.”

“But _this_. This is to save people’s lives.”

 She turned away from him and stepped into the narrow bathroom. There was just enough room for a single person and Jack leaned into the cramped doorway, one hand holding the sheet around his waist like a child.

Lena glared, jabbing her toothbrush at him in a near threatening manner before she turned back to the mirror.

“Lena,” he said. He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it softly. She tried to pull away, but there was nowhere she could go unless she stepped into the bathtub. 

“Do you know how many of my cohort at MIT were Soviets? I mean, I’m one, maybe two compared to hundreds. And turnabout is fair play, right?" He stepped closer and tried to turn her around to face him. She kept her eyes steadily on the mirror. "I do love you," he said, "but as we speak, the U.S. is developing and testing weapons more powerful and destructive than those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Russia is doing everything it can to match them. We need to maintain the balance, Lena. The option of tit-for-tat. If we don’t…” he reached out and gestured back to the window, all of this will be gone. In minutes.”

Lena looked up at him, her eyes smarting from tears. “And I suppose you were just enjoying all of this while it lasted. Get dressed, Jack. Get dressed and get out.”

She might have warned him, she thought later. She’d long been aware that Lillian had wired her apartment, that she had her followed and kept tabs on her. All to protect her, of course.

She might have put a finger to Jack’s lips as they nuzzled in bed that morning, might have stopped him before he said too much, but she was tired, tired of being lied to and manipulated, of having her loyalties tossed between one culture and another.

So, when the KGB agents burst into her room minutes later and dragged a half-dressed Jack Spheer away, she called Lillian from her bugged but modern rotary phone to thank her personally.“You were right, mother,” she said, “he really was no good.”

“My dearest Lena Lionelovna,” Lillian said, her voice oozing with sympathy, “come to the ballet tonight. You can forget all about it. And there are some people I’d like you to meet.”

Spheer hadn’t suffered much. Not right away. He was dismissed from his teaching post, and after a lengthy negotiation with the British government, carted back to England. It wasn’t until years later, when a man sat across from Lena in a cafeteria and slid the photo of Spheer's bruised and lifeless body across the table, that she decided to honor her ex-lover’s request. At least now, she thought, it was her choice. 

#

 

“You want to stop that?” Maggie said. She, Vudvick and Ioan Bonderev had been crowded into a beaten Moscvitch 400 for the past two and a half hours. The latter had been drumming his nubby fingers on the back of her seat in a deliberate attempt to irritate.

“Yeah, that,” Maggie said. “We’re going to miss the target if you keep that up.”

Bonderev, a wiry, vicious bastard, responded with a gap-toothed smile and proceeded to crack his knuckles. Maggie turned her eyes back to the street, suddenly glad for the sonorous peal of Spasskaya Tower. She didn't dislike Bonderev so much as hate the whole idea of his existence. ‘Officially,’ he was a paper pusher, spent most of his time signing out documents and filing them back away. Unofficially, he was part of the 13th, a Department dedicated to fixing, to ensuring a decisive ‘finish’ to a job. Maggie refused to be intimidated.

He’d been sent along to be a nuisance, to act as a background threat, by Maggie and Vudvick’s superior, one Constantin Dmitrov. Maggie had shared a tense exchange with Dmitrov the day previous, walking into that stuffy 5th floor office as if into a furnace. The room was bad enough in the summer months when Dmitrov never opened the windows, but in winter it was a hothouse, smelling of pickles and kvass. 

Dmitrov never seemed to move during these exchanges. Whenever Maggie was sent up to report to him, she wondered if he ever got up from his chair. _If I were to bend and yank this desk away,_ she thought, _I’d find a stump where his legs should be, attached to a series of wires leading through a hole in the floor._ It didn’t help things that Dmitrov spoke in a monotone, that he swiveled in his seat like a robot. It was a power play, of course, a way to emphasize himself as established. ‘See? I am part of this building. I _am_ the Lyubyanka.’

 “Sit down,” he’d told her, and as she did, she saw his fingers rolling a thin piece of paper into a tube, just enough so it made noise. Maggie had noticed these idiosyncrasies in other older members of the Bureau; the strange twitches and crutches one developed when trying to out-think waves of deception and suspicion, to survive the next purge. She eyed the broken pencil on the edge of Dmitrov’s desk. There was a rounded pock in the paint as if he'd brought it down in a fit of rage.

 _This was not your fault_ , she told herself, _you had no part of this._

As she steeled herself for rebuke, however, Dmitrov exhaled and said, “I apologize for authorizing that warrant. Arkov seemed certain. I could not risk it. He’s being transferred to a desk position.”

Maggie bit her lip to keep from smiling and nodded, “I would have done the same, Sir.”

But her relief was short-lived, for Dmitrov leaned back and brought a hand to his mouth to stifle a cough. It didn’t come. Instead, he said, “Now how do you propose we salvage this mess?”

“Sir, before the raid, there was word that one of Covillev’s contacts was going to exchange information with a disciple. We’ve got that disciple in custody, and we’re working on him, but I’m thinking… hoping anyway, that the contact might not have gotten word of the raid. It sounds like they were coming in from outside of Moscow. There’s a chance we could bring them in, ID them at least if they haven’t been tipped off.”

Dmitrov took the rolled up piece of paper and bent it between his fingers. “Do so, Lieutenant Rodaski. And see that you get results.”

Now sitting in the middle of Red Square, Maggie had little hope that said contact would appear. Vudvick had given up and was sneaking glances at the battered paperback of Raymond Chandler he'd propped on the dash. But then she glanced up, saw the figure of a woman in a long dark coat, her body going rigid as she stared across the sunlit expanse of the Square.

Maggie opened the car door from the driver’s side. “Take the wheel,” she said to Vudvick, “but no fast moves. I’ll follow on foot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silbervogel was a real plan, but never became canon, thank Rao, so was the massive outdoor swimming pool. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior was eventually rebuilt over the spot.


	7. Bartering with Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More on the way soon. Have gotten a brief reprieve from the phantom zone.

#

Lena forced down the image of Jack’s body as she glanced up at the hands of Spassky Tower.

 _Stay sharp_. _It’s almost time._

A hard gust of wind ruffled her coat, nearly pushing her back. It was stronger in the open spaces of the square, whipping down through the open canyon between Kremlin and cathedral. She slipped the paper from her inner coat pocket, rechecking that the fold was right, and pressed forward. Already people were lining up outside the Lenin Mausoleum, the voices around her growing louder and more strident.

 _If he is there_ …she told herself _._

He wasn’t.

Save for a few pigeons bobbing forlornly at his base, the statue of Zhukovsky stood resolutely alone. Lena looked around at the emptiness ahead of her and felt utterly exposed. Suddenly, every child’s smile became knowing and accusatory, every whisper between lovers the sign of some sinister collusion against her. And in that instant, she hesitated, stopped abruptly in that open space, just long enough, she knew, to give herself away.

She spotted the car in the distance, a drab orange Moscvitch, parked at the corner of the Kazan Cathedral, heard the distant purr of its engine as it lurched forward and turned in her direction. Still too far to get a good look. If she hurried, she could blend into the growing crowd and disappear. She whipped around and walked quickly in the opposite direction, on her face that self-deprecatory mask of one who has just forgotten something.

The children’s voices were loud in her ears.

“Can we have ice cream?”

“That old lady stepped on my foot, Papa! On purpose!”

Lena maintained a steady pace as she cut into the crowd now entering through the grand arch that led into the GUM department store. Opened in 1893, the opulent structure was Moscow’s showpiece, both remnant of the Tsarist era and a jeweled finger in the face of the capitalists. It was also the only place with a steady supply of consumer goods, Three Elephants tea, Eskimo ice cream, and clothing, and thus, it would be a crush inside. She might lose them there.

She tugged up her collar and pulled her hat down low, hoping to obscure as much of her face as possible, then she ducked under the arch. Inside, a cacophony of noise greeted her, and the sun streaming through the skylight above was bright and unforgiving. She darted into the maze of bakeries and toy shops, ghosting beneath the chandeliers and past the propaganda posters railing against greed next to advertisements for men’s cologne and neckties.

 _Just keep going. Don’t look back_.

The paper crackled in her hand, its folded end now damp with sweat. She had to lose it somewhere. Fast.

She pressed forward and saw an old man turned away from her on a bench. He was waiting for his wife as she tried on shawls at an adjacent stall. Beside the bench was a trash bin, full of cartons and wrapping paper sticky with food. Lena walked past them, jostling the wife as she dropped the paper into the bin. The woman frowned, but Lena nodded in apology and kept going.

“What do you think of the color, Mitya?” she heard her say. Exiting this part of the store would be too risky right now. She’d go to the upper floors of the arcade, find a place to ditch the coat and hat. It was a shame she wouldn’t be able to barter it, but if she changed her appearance, they wouldn’t spot her on her way out. She hurried along, elbowing her way past the grand fountain that centered the arcade, and ducked into the stairwell. From the second floor, she could see if she’d been followed. She kept her head low as she ascended, slowing her pace until she reached the railing overlooking the fountain. She saw no one out of the ordinary until she saw the man in the hat. He looked the part of a KGB agent, the grey suit, that cheap factory fedora worn with a defiant lack of panache. Lena was going to step out of sight when a woman ran up and threw her arms around his neck, planting him with a lingering kiss.

_Not him._

But as the couple cooed and nuzzled, the man stumbled back into a woman who flashed them a brief look of irritation before scanning the length of the arcade. She wore trousers and a leather jacket, the kind worn by biker kids. She was dark haired and strikingly beautiful, and her eyes seemed to take in everything around her, to note every detail.

 _This_ was her pursuer. 

And just as the realization hit her, the woman’s eyes shot up as if sensing her observer. Lena backed away from the railing and walked briskly into the crowd.

#

“ _Pizdets_ ,” Maggie spat, as she scanned the arcade. She was out of breath, having bolted across the square. Vudvick had been slowed by the foot traffic, but Maggie had managed to stay on the target until she’d disappeared into the department store. The interior was a gaudy chaos of sack dresses and confectionary, and the air smelled of burned sugar and the brine of cheap caviar. The woman had been dressed a little too early for winter, in a black fur coat and hat. That would stand out, but all Maggie could see was color: the bright red bolts of velvet that covered the display cases, the mauve packages of sweets and imported Turkish fabrics hawked next to hot pink lipsticks.

Other than a glimpse of pale skin and a sharp jawline, Maggie hadn’t gotten a look at the woman's face, but she had guessed mid-thirties, and her posture clearly rang of dachas and “good” champagne. 

She let herself breathe for a moment, distracted momentarily by a grotesque display of heterosexual affection. She’d discovered that term in one of the KGB’s archives of banned materials, some ancient gentleman named Kraft-Ebbing who’d alternated that word throughout the text with "normal-sexual.' Normal. Something to distrust, indeed. For better or worse, it was one of the more valuable lessons Oscar had taught her.

“The key is in the mundane,” he liked to say. But Oscar meant it less as a means of discernment, of looking at the run-of-the-mill, than in projecting his suspicions onto harmless novelty. How many people had he imprisoned for humdrum proclivities--an interest in golf, a love for Western, or just the wrong kind of Russian music? But observation meant leaning away from your own biases. For Maggie, it was like taking a surveillance photo with a buttonhole camera. What you saw vs. what the lens picked up. You had to learn to adjust your stance, to turn just the right way so that the eye on your lapel would fall in line with what your eyes were seeing. But Oscar’s lens, she suspected, had always focused in the wrong direction, on the wrong things. And if he had his evidence, well, that was all that mattered.

The only thing Maggie could do was use his advice the right way.

She let her gaze pass methodically over the crowd as she stepped forward, past the booths and through the jostling crowd. _Look for the ordinary and you’ll find the uncommon._ The woman couldn’t have gotten far; she might be watching her from above. On that thought, Maggie looked up and saw a couple leaning over the ledge, watching the canoodling couple behind her, saw gloved hands, pushing away from the railing. She glanced down again and saw it. An old man. He was settling back onto a bench, attempting to fold a newspaper he’d fished from the trash can. A days-old issue of Pravda, one of its rare color pages and upside down.

“Does the great GUM department store not take out its trash?” Maggie said to herself, a smile creeping across her face. She shoved her hands in her pockets and approached him, keeping her expression amiable.

“A little late for Moscow fashion week, are we not, uncle?” she said.

Startled, the old man pulled the paper down and cleared his throat. He nodded at a woman in the shop. His wife, Maggie presumed. She was haggling over a dress. “While she’s in there, what else am I to do?”

Maggie reached into her pocket and fished out a pack of Kent cigarettes. They were contraband, worked as currency in Romania, but in Russia, they were luxury enough.

“I propose a trade, Comrade,” she said. “You see,” she gestured to her trousers, to her jacket. “I need to make myself more ladylike. I should like to consult the latest fashions.”

The man looked at her, at first perplexed as to why this strange woman would offer a black market gem for a grease-stained, days old newspaper, but then his eyes narrowed and a glimmer of fear passed over his features. It didn’t happen often. Maggie was good at hiding, but the old man _knew_ what she was. And judging from his age, from the cracked skin on his face and hands, he’d once been on the bad side of the NKVD. It hadn’t been hard. She hated this part of the job. No matter how often she told herself she could improve things, that she could help wipe away her the legacy of her father and those like him and make her work a little more about community, his expression shot through her with a guilty hopelessness. She tried anyway. A joke.

“A bargain, don’t you think?” Maggie sat down next to him, offering the pack. 

The man looked away, his face pale, and passed her the newspaper.

“Did you see who tossed this by chance?” she said, making her voice pleasant. Casual. “A woman in a black coat? A fur hat?”

“I am sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I did not.”

Maggie took a cigarette from the pack and lit it for him; then she placed it gently between his lips. He reached up and took it, the trembling in his hands lessening as he took a drag. She smiled at him again. Warmly this time, and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“It’s fine, Comrade. I appreciate it.” Then, she pressed the entire pack into his hands and stood, feeling more like a bully than a keeper of the peace.

Her quarry was gone. There’d be no way to call in enough agents to block the exits in time, but as Maggie flipped through the paper, she saw something perhaps better. Measurements. Equations. A few words— _confirmed military application_ — scrawled loosely over a cartoon bear, next to which the writer had sketched a window and written in a date. _Nov 1-7._

She folded the paper neatly and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Kent cigarettes were a form of currency in Ceaucescu's Romania, but a little later than this period. Soviet motorcycle gangs were in force in the 1980s, but I had difficulty tracing them back before that. That said, many people did opt for bikes as they were more affordable. Plus, Maggie really NEEDS her leather jacket. (;


	8. Silent Companions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This flashback was going to come a little bit later, but the enforced Sanvers silence at SDCC called for measures.

#

Was it possible?

Alex placed the Geiger counter near the stream where she’d knelt to take a sample. As soon as the wand passed over the water, the crackling stilled and silenced. She closed her eyes, listening to the liquid babble of the stream, the chirrups of blackbirds as they nestled down for the night. The days were shorter now, and those bright streaks were growing more conspicuous in the darkening sky. Soon it would take more than the assertions in the local Worker’s Almanac or the pronouncements of Soviet meteorologists to fend off the questions.

She had taken half a day to trek out here, and the closer she got to the anomaly, the more the taiga seemed to bristle with color and life. She continued on, even as the device began to click and sputter. 7 millisieverts per hour, she estimated, not yet dangerous levels, but what if one were to stay out here a month-- a year? And more importantly, it was confirmation. Something was emanating from the lights above.

The counter’s sudden silence could only mean two things. Either some property in the water was blocking the radiation, or there was a spike. If another event occurred before the tube in the Geiger could restore itself, the result was an abrupt hush. That meant danger.

Alex took a deep breath and forced herself to think logically. Such silences were inevitably preceded by a rapid rise in clicks. This hadn’t happened, and when she stepped a few feet back from the stream, the crackling started up again as if the tube had not been disrupted. Even stranger, the device wasn’t producing the usual rasp of background radiation. The clicks produced a rhythm, distinct patterns that made her wonder if she was hallucinating.

 _Next time_ , she thought, _I will have Jami borrow a tape recorder._

She swiped a hand across her damp forehead and looked up at an opening in the gathering clouds overhead. A streak of green light was clearly visible through the treetops, its glimmer more intense as darkness crept over the forest. She put the device down and poured some water from her thermos over her hands, massaging its coolness into her scalp. Then, feeling her stomach rattle with hunger, she reached into her pack for a strip of jerky.

She chewed on it as she made her way along the creek, savoring its salty, gamey toughness as her other hand held the wand over the water. Silence. All the way to a rocky escarpment at which the water pooled. Next to the pool was a doll sewn from sackcloth, its features stained on with berries and ash. One of the local deities, she guessed. Like other forms of Christianity, the Orthodox church had assimilated much of the pagan imagery as it gained influence. But out here, many of those beliefs remained in their earlier forms.

Alex squatted down to get a better look. If it was a recent ornament, perhaps whoever placed it here knew something about what was occurring.

 She leaned over the brook, her boot shifting on the slippery rock and ran a finger over the doll. It wasn’t frayed, didn’t seem worn by the elements.

“Hello, little one,” she whispered.

She didn’t expect an answer.

The sound of a startled voice behind her caused her to spin around, her left foot slipping into the creek.

“Damn it!” Heart pounding, Alex looked up to see the uniformed figure in front of her, his face obscured by a mask and night goggles. He was observing her in a posture of fear and surprise.

“Who are you?” Alex said, first in Russian. There was no answer. She lifted her foot from the stream and tried again in Finnish. “ _Kuka sina olet?”_ His hands were shaking.

She’d leaned her rifle on her pack next to a tree and saw him glance over at it cautiously. He took his hand off the barrel of his own and reached up, placing his wrist over his mouth.

“51, 412. Fauna encountered. Repeat. Fauna encountered. Report. Over.”

 _American,_ Alex thought.

Alex held up her hand and took a step toward him. He stumbled backward, listening to the orders crackling from the device.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Alex said in English. “You’re here…” she gestured to the water, to the sky, “for this. Aren’t you?”

The man cocked his head and aimed his gun again as he backed into the woods. Then he turned and bolted into the trees.

“Wait!” Alex made a run for her pack. She snatched up her rifle and gave chase.

He was from the outside. And he, they _knew_ something that she had only suspected. His clothes, that equipment. It was state-of-the-art technology, more advanced than any Siberian patrol.

“Stop!” she called out. “I need to know. We need to—”

She was getting closer. She could hear him breathing in the darkness and his gait gave off youth and inexperience. She heard him stumble, catching up to him as he landed face first in the dirt.

He’d fallen over a rotted tree trunk. Some night vision. Alex was on him before he could rise, but he kicked her in the stomach. She gasped and curled in on herself, grabbing him by arm, using his weight as leverage to land a blow to his face. Her knuckles smacked painfully against metal rims of his goggles, but it did the trick. He flopped to his knees, reeling as his hands found purchase in the grass. Alex smacked him again.

“I didn’t want to do this, but…” She reached down, “I need to know.”

She yanked off the goggles, saw his eyes regarding her blearily through the holes in his ski mask. “The…” she couldn’t find the word in English, “the _thing_ in the sky. That’s why you’re here, aren’t you?”

Her fingers were under his mask now, tugging it up when suddenly her mind went white with pain. A pitch, higher than anything she’d ever heard, jolted her eardrums as a light like the glare of the sun drowned out all shadow and contour. Alex reached up, clutching her ears, eyes squeezed shut against the brightness.

Bozhe moi, it hurt!

A flock of birds swooped low in their confusion and Alex heard their cries amid the din, felt talons nicking her scalp and her hands as they darted around her. She felt the shove the man’s boots and fell backward, unable to process beyond the noise and the pain. As she hit the ground, her eyes opened for but an instant. It was there, hovering over her. One of Jami’s forest sprites.

Only there was nothing of the forest about it.

The thing was pure machine.

#

October 1941

After the boat was safely tugged to shore, Alex didn’t see the young Lieutenant for weeks. The remnants of her battalion were immediately dispatched to corduroy the routes coming in from the east, digging ditches and laying down slats of timber. A spate of heavy rains matched with warmer temperatures had made bogs out of the roads leading into Moscow, delaying the transport of supplies.

As she worked, Alex would glance into the windows of the trucks, casting her eyes over soldiers as they marched behind the T-34 tanks rolling to the front. If she looked hard enough, she thought, she might catch a glimpse of dark hair tucked up in an ushanka or the glimmer of a golden shoulder strap.

She’d also heard the talk, about the thousands of Soviet soldiers now surrounded by German Panzer divisions. It was a strategy the enemy called _hexenkessel_ or “witches cauldron.” The Germans would surround them in pockets, keeping them trapped until they were shot attempting escape or surrendered to imprisonment and starvation. Had Maggie been one of those soldiers? Was she encamped somewhere, waiting to be picked off or starved?

In calmer moments, Alex merely wondered at this need to see her again. Was it because she had saved her life? She rarely thought about Dmitri as much, and he was her supposed sweetheart. Dmitri had been a few years older than Alex and already a graduate student. He was working under Eliza at the hospital in Biriov and Alex supposed that she liked him well enough. As Eliza often noted, he was a lot like Jeremiah, and she even enjoyed his company, enjoyed going to the cinema, liked the feel of his hand as they strolled around the lake. But despite his kindness, it was an affection that felt more practical than passionate.

“That is not a bad thing,” Eliza said when Alex broached the subject, “that's what makes for a lasting partnership.”

 “You talk about it like it’s a Party membership,” Alex said.

Eliza laughed. “You _do_ know the wedding vows, don’t you?” She lowered her voice and scrunched her face into the stern semblance of an official. “Do you promise to raise your children according to the principles of Marxism and Leninism?”

Alex had laughed, and despite the questions that still pulled at her, didn’t trouble her mother on the subject again. It wouldn’t have made a difference, for within months, the Germans had attacked and Dmitri was gone, shipped off to fight the onslaught of Operation Barbarossa.

After another week of digging ditches, Alex was finally transferred to a field hospital. Despite her youth, proof of her medical studies came in the form of a chance meeting with a former teacher who berated Alex's superior officer for wasting a valuable resource.

She worked tirelessly, assisting with amputations, coating lesser wounds with sulfanilamide, and learning quickly about the art of triage. If treated within an hour of a serious wound, a soldier had a close to 90 percent chance of recovery, anything less and it more than halved.

When she first heard Maggie’s voice, a jolt of panic went through her. Her voice was unmistakable, the words fraught with anger and pain.

 _Has she been wounded?_ Alex thought. _Is she--_

She hurried toward the sound, relieved to see the young Lieutenant hustling alongside a stretcher carrying a young man. She was swatting away a dusting of snow from her sleeves, barking orders at a nurse.

“Gently!” she said. Alex met them as they reached the triage point and lowered the young man onto a waiting pallet.

 “I said gently! Come on!” Maggie’s voice was choked and frantic. The young man was delirious, his face glistening with sweat. Alex felt a pang of jealousy as she took in the boy’s features. He was handsome, despite the pallor. Was this a lover? A husband even?

She swallowed and raising her voice, asked, “has he just arrived?”

A stupid question, but she was unable to think, even less so when the Lieutenant’s eyes met her own, flickering with recognition. “Danvers. Hello!” Maggie’s tone softened considerably. “He was trapped in a cauldron, took a run for it...” the words died in her throat and she looked down at him, her fingers brushing his cheek, “...you—you made it, friend.”

The boy reached up and Maggie pressed his hand back down with hers. Trembling, she placed her other hand on his forehead. “Easy, _sobutyl'nik_. You hang on, alright? They’re going to patch you up.”

 _Sobutyl'nik_ , Alex thought, a word used for more comradely affection. Maggie shot a look at the nurse. “Get him some water.”

“I doubt he can dri—”

“Get it,” Alex said.

The nurse spat something and hurried off, and Maggie’s expression warmed. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Alex said. “She’s a problem.”

Maggie smiled tentatively and gestured toward the young man. “Is it…?”

With gentle hands, Alex lifted up the blood-soaked patch of jacket covering the wound. The bandages covering it were already soaked in blood, and Alex could see the impression where the bullet had entered. There was no hope. The wound was abdominal and the bullet had likely punctured the liver. Slowly, she raised her eyes, trying her best to mask her expression.

Maggie took a shuddering breath and nodded, her eyes not leaving Alex’s until the boy reached up to grab her wrist.

“Hey, friend,” Maggie said, her voice a whisper.

 “Please.” His breath was labored and he forced his chin to his chest, eyeing his pocket. “I’ve a letter. Can you take it?”

Alex reached over and lifted the flap of his jacket as Maggie tugged a crumpled envelope from his breast pocket. It was miraculously clean of blood.

“Eliza,” he said to Maggie, “Will you see that she...”

Maggie hesitated, but only briefly. Then she took the boy’s hand and squeezed it. “I will. I swear on it.”

She turned to Alex, her voice hoarse. “Got anything for the pain, Danvers?”

 “I’ll see,” Alex said, not wanting to lie, “but we’re low right now, we only—”

“Do it.”

Alex started at the sharpness in the other woman’s voice. Her expression was hard again and etched with pain.

 “I’m sorry,” she said, “of course.” She turned away, her face hot and hurried toward the supply room.  

 _Idiot_! _Of all the insensitive, blockheaded things to say._

She rushed past the rows of beds, ignoring the scattered calls from the wounded. She’d be sent to the gulag, possibly even shot by the NKVD if caught pilfering an extra dose. But Maggie had saved her life. And Maggie was in pain, a pain that could only be alleviated by halting the pain of another. 

When she returned, the lieutenant was perched next to the boy on an upturned bucket, her hand resting lazily on his knee. She forced a smile, stroking his hair as Alex administered the morphine. Alex watched in relief as his eyes fluttered into sleep. He wouldn’t last much longer. Perhaps not even the night.

She gave Maggie a perfunctory nod and spent the rest of her rounds tending to fevers and removing a piece of shrapnel from a turret gunner. By the time she returned to that part of the hospital, both Maggie and the boy were gone. A new patient now occupied his cot.

 _Oh, Maggie. I am so sorry._ Alex couldn’t fathom what had given her that impression. Maybe it was her guardedness; maybe it was the wounded expression that briefly revealed itself at the boy’s side, or when Alex had fallen into the water, but the Maggie seemed apart from the others around her. Alone. 

Exhausted, she pulled on her coat and stepped outside into soft, white landscape. The first snows had started and Alex marveled at the sight, enjoying the brief respite of silence it cast over the besieged city. She halted when she saw her. Maggie stood in front of her. She was leaning against a brick wall, a lit cigarette between her fingers.

 “Hey,” she said. She pushed herself upright and walked over to her. Alex felt her heart stop.

”Hey.” 

 “Listen, I’m sorry about that back there,” she said. “He was special.”

Alex raised her eyes shyly. “A lover?”

Maggie shook her head. She tossed her cigarette into the snow and shoved her hands into her pockets. “A friend. We enlisted together. That one...that was hard.” She came up alongside Alex and the two of them began walking apace. “I uh...wanted to thank you. For making him comfortable.”

“I’m sure your taking that letter was the stronger comfort,” Alex said.

They slipped into an easy amble, passing the off-duty soldiers at their card games, the tips of their cigarettes darting like fireflies in the darkness. One of the men had an accordion and a few others stood around him, singing the _Song of the Volga._

 _Ey, ukhnem!_ __  
Ey, ukhnem!  
Yeshcho razik, yeshcho da raz!

“Who was she?” Alex asked.

“A girl back home,” Maggie said, “the usual story.”

There was something in Maggie’s tone that indicated more than that, and Alex couldn’t keep herself from asking. “Did you know her?”

Maggie nodded, her smile hardening. “A little. She was something else.”

“Something else,” Alex repeated. She didn’t know why she did what she did next, but she felt herself reach sideways and slip her arm through the other woman’s, her hand curling gently around her wrist. Maggie didn’t respond in surprise or pull away. Instead, she leaned into her, her warmth a startling contrast to the growing chill.

 “How’s your shoulder?”

 “You remembered,” Maggie said.

“Of course,” Alex said, a little too enthusiastically. She cleared her throat, thankful for the darkness as they continued on in companionable silence.

When they got to her barracks, Alex didn’t want to let go. They stood there for a moment, arms linked, taking in the softness of the snow, the distant rumble of artillery. Then Maggie turned and smiled up at her. “Well, I guess this is goodnight, Private Danvers.”

Alex could only nod in silence. She wanted to lean in, to run her hands through that dark hair, but Maggie merely nodded, as if to confirm their parting and stepped away. It took Alex a full half a minute to call after her. 

“It’s Corporal.”

Maggie stopped, her shoulders shaking with laughter. She turned and Alex saw for the first time, the full extent of her smile. It was electric, even in the wartime darkness. Enough to burn away all the gloom.

“You couldn’t tell?” Alex said, feeling light all of a sudden.

Maggie gave her a mock salute. “See you around, Corporal Danvers.”

“That's Corporal Doctor Danvers, I’ll have you know,” Alex called after her. And then, in a much softer voice, she said, “I’d like that very much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've altered the year of Alex and Maggie's meeting from '42 to '41 as the Battle of Moscow barely lasted into January '42.


	9. Stars and Suits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: some very mild Guardiancorp flirting in this chapter. I needed to introduce James to the story as he'll be important down the road. Also, I liked the challenge of creating some chemistry between them without the other characters having to announce it with a bullhorn. Only flirting. Supercorp and Sanvers are endgame. Thanks for reading!

The chandelier room at Spaso House was already crowded with guests when Lena arrived, its interior an odd contrast to the neoclassical facade outside. The U.S. Ambassador’s residence still boasted of its Ionic columns, the vaulted ceiling centered by the eponymous chandelier, but the current ambassador had opted to go modern, replacing the furniture with sloping Eames chairs and a molded table that splayed across the carpet like a squirt of Cheese Whiz.

Add to that the mix of brightly dressed foreign dignitaries and drab Muscovite elites, their hands eagerly plucking that next drink or the caviar smudged toasts, and you had an image not too dissimilar to an American cookbook--a Jell-O mold filled with all the wrong ingredients.

 _Just get through this_ , she told herself, t _hen it’s back to Star City and to work._ Lena had come to this function in lieu of J’onn, whose name outside the program, remained confidential. Most at the compound referred to him only as Chief Designer, and in an order from above, he’d been denied the chance for a Nobel Prize. He may have ushered Sputnik into orbit, but he was, after all, a precious state secret. "Wasn't that more of an honor?" they'd argued. J’onn, he had told her, was a nickname he’d picked up in the war. “Someone thought I was American,” he said with a dour chuckle. “They called me Mr. Jones and then they mispronounced even that.”

“Pilfer some strawberries for me if you can,” he said, “or if there are pineapples...”

Lena nodded. “I’m sorry you’re not coming with me.”

He waved her off. “Honestly, I’m happier spending my evening in my hotel with a good book and the KGB listening in as company. Go be the face of the program, Lena. Yours is far prettier than mine.”

But Lena, too, was eager to get back to Star City. The Zvezda cadets were in their last weeks of training, and the launch, now with her augmentations, might actually meet the proposed date. She was also, she thought with no lack of discomfort, strangely eager to see Starikov again. 

She shook off the thought and plucked a glass of white wine from a passing waiter, marveling at its sweetness. California wines were much like some of the Hollywood types she’d met, she thought. Charming but often loud, and despite their initial friendliness to the palate, they rarely made a lasting impression. She glanced up to see Captain Schmulov approaching hovering behind her. Her attendance required an escort—a shadow really—in the form of the Soviet Military Police. Schmulov, however, wasn’t the least bit intimidating. Just a farm boy who’d lucked out with an invite to the country club, but he was taking the escort part a little too seriously, lifting his hand to Lena’s elbow, stepping on her heels whenever she attempted put some space between them. 

“Lena,” Schmulov said, “would you like to dance? I have learned some American steps for this occasion. The cha-cha perhaps? Or the Tvest.”

“Twist,” Lena said, forcing back a laugh. “Sounds lovely, but I’m afraid the music isn’t right, Captain.” She saw the young man’s look of disappointment and felt a twinge of guilt. “What I would like more than anything,” she said, “is one of those canapés. I bet with your height you could reach over that large gentleman currently commandeering the hors-d'oeuvres and get me a few.”

Schmulov’s face continued to pale as he confronted what looked like a mountain. The man wasn’t overweight, although he might appear so from a distance. That was all muscle beneath that loose-fitting suit, like Orson Welles in _A Touch of Evil_ —if Welles were a boxer. But the young captain steeled himself and nodded resolutely. “Your wish is my command, Comrade.”

“Thank you,” Lena said, finally warming to the kid, “after I’ve eaten something I’ll be more than happy to dance.”

In truth, Lena was hungry, and she could hardly begrudge the party officials now chowing down on every bit of that lavish spread. What the Americans took for granted were luxuries even for the higher-up Soviet officials—or at least the ones who didn’t accept bribes. She took another sip of wine, enjoying the brief respite. _If it’s because she is a woman, well, of course, I’m invested,_ she told herself. _It’s a professional sense of identification._ But along with that comforting thought came the knowledge that she had taken no such interest in Ilsa Borodin, nor Tereshkova, whom she considered to be a friend.

A flashbulb shattered her bubble of privacy and she turned around, the wine nearly tipping from her glass. The man held up his hand in apology.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He was a youngish, handsome black man with a shaved head and an elegant gray suit. Around his neck was slung a bulky antique camera, the kind she’d seen in movies like _His Girl Friday_ or _Rear Window_. She half expected a felt hat with a 'press' card in the band. Lena blinked at him for a moment, her eyes still adjusting. When she didn’t answer, he lowered his voice and said in Russian, “do you speak English?”

Lena shut her eyes, still seeing the glare of the bulb against her lids and nodded. “I do. I uh…am just a tad camera shy.”

He stepped closer, his head bowed. “I’m part of the public relations team for the Embassy here in Moscow, which here means I’m a camera jockey who never gets to use his camera. I guess I get over eager sometimes.”

Lena smiled back at him and took another sip of her wine. “That’s understandable. So many of us rarely get to do what we’re good at.”

He nodded and reached out his hand. “James Olson, Public Affairs Section.”

“Lena Luthor. Engineer.”

He reared his head back appreciatively. “Engineer.”

“Space program,” Lena said, almost checking herself. She _was_ allowed to divulge that much, wasn’t she? That _was_ why she was there. James shook his head. “Man, I would _love_ to visit your facilities some time. Get some shots of what you guy—people do. I don’t suppose the chances for that are—”

Lena raised an eyebrow and he stopped himself. “That’s about what I expected. Can’t hurt a fellow to try.”

“Do you know,” Mr. Olsen, “how many women in Russia work as scientists, as doctors?” she lifted her hand to her chest, “I’m only one example.”

“I don’t doubt that,” James said, “but let me ask you something. Do you still have to do all the housework?”

Lena snorted and opened her mouth to retort, but when she looked at him, his expression was less combative than thoughtful.

“You know,” he said, “my being here,” he looked around to make sure that others weren’t close enough to hear, “it’s partly cosmetic. I know that. Show the Russians that America is all about liberty and happiness for all. But under the surface, hell, on the surface, kids who look like me are still fighting just to sit at a lunch counter. I guess what I’m saying is that you and I, we might be the best of the best at what we do, but to them, we serve a similar purpose.”

Lena swallowed, remembering the meeting with Gruskov, his treatment of his female assistant. “I can’t entirely disagree with that,” she said.

"Don't mean to unload," he said. "I just think it's important to be frank when you can." 

He was attractive, she thought, and genuine, unlike the toothy buzzcut stiffs that populated the Kennedy administration—men who espoused progressive ideals until it came to their wives getting their own bank accounts.

She saw Schmulov approaching. He was balancing a tray of food and craning his neck over a woman in an off-kilter wig. James glanced in the direction she was looking and slipped his camera off his shoulder, passing it to one of the wait staff. “Would you like to dance, engineer?”

Lena smiled and gave him her hand. “I’d love to.”

It was good timing, for a nice slow number by the Shirelles came on and Lena slipped easily into his arms. He smelled good in the way that a lot of American men did, that comforting scent of cheap soap mixed with expensive aftershave.

“So, is there anything you’re not allowed to talk about?” he asked.

Lena laughed. “Why of course not, Mr. Olsen.”

He nodded a little uncomfortably toward Schmulov. “I’m sure your shadow thinks you’re spilling state secrets about now. Must be hard. So much secrecy between our two countries.”

“That’s nothing compared to the secrets between people,” she said, her smile stiffening slightly. She felt now that he was leading her into something, even more so now that he’d noticed her discomfort and checked himself. “So, is it true?” he said, whirling her around, away from Schmulov’s eyes, with a gentle flourish.

“Is what true?”

“Do you still have to do the housework?”

“Only for myself,” she said.

“Ah,” he smiled “…and how is that going?”

“As you say in America, everything is fine.”

He grinned and pulled her closer. Then lowering his voice, “You know around here, a guy gets fired for saying just that very thing.”

“Which means…” Lena said.

“We have all American staff working here and at the Embassy,” he said. Lena felt his hand sliding gently up her shoulder, his thumb pressing lightly into the fabric of her dress. “They can get isolated, start to crack. Sometimes when a guy is feeling like that, instead of talking to one of our in-house shrinks, he sneaks into an empty room with a phone and dials up some random number in Moscow, and when the person answers, he musters up his best Russian and says, ‘everything is okay’ and hangs up.”

“A prank,” Lena said.

“Worse than that,” James said. “It makes a mess for us because likely the KGB is listening in. Makes a worse mess for whatever poor Russian was dumb or unlucky enough to pick up the phone.”

“Why are you telling me this?” She glanced back at Schmulov who had thankfully turned away. The Captain was chatting up a raven-haired woman in a strapless dress. _All the best, Comrade,_ Lena thought.

“Because when someone says that, it's a cry for help.” He stepped away from her as the music lulled, his eyes fixed on her. “Do you need help, Lena Luthor?”

Lena let out a breath and let her hands rest at her sides. “What I need, Mr. Olsen, is another drink. Thanks for the dance.”

As she walked away, she heard him call after her. “It was a pleasure, Comrade Luthor.”

Lena lifted her chin and walked back to Schmulov, ready to ask him for that dance, but his attentions were clearly on the other woman now. She wore a black, strapless gown, exposing broad, somewhat muscular shoulders draped with long, dark hair. She was laughing at a joke Schmulov had made, but Lena could tell with the even roll of those shoulders that it was forced. She was going to address Schmulov when the woman turned and the words stopped in her throat.

It was the agent from the Square. Her pursuer. Lena swallowed as she watched that forced smile fade even as those dark eyes sharpened with curiosity.

Lena gave Schmulov a questioning look and the young Captain turned as red as borscht. He’d taken more than a tipple in her absence. Her own glass had been drained.

“Comrade Designer,” Schmulov said, “may I have the honor to introduce you to someone very special. This is Magdalena Rodaski. She received the order of the Red Star and the Order of Lenin. You’re looking at a real war hero.”

 _A killer_ _, at least_ , Lena thought.

The woman was regarding her closely, but not because she recognized her. Lena lowered her head and felt her body tense.

“Captain Schmulov is all flattery,” Rodaski said. “Does he use his charms on you?”

She cocked her head and passed Lena another glass of wine. Lena took it with relief.

“Thank you,” she said. It was cold and went down wrong in her throat. She doubled over in a cough, raising her hand to her mouth.

“That good, huh?”

Her speech was refreshingly casual, gruff almost, and the contrast with her appearance was startling.

“A bit sweet,” Lena said, “and different.”

“In my book, that’s a good thing,” the woman said.

“Sweet? Or different?”

She answered Lena with a stunning, mischievous grin that nearly caused her to choke again. Schmulov was staring at their back-and-forth, his eyes muddy with drink.

“The Captain here says you’re with the cosmonaut program,” the woman said, “must be exciting.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly and Lena felt her jaw clench. She might not have recognized her from the department store, but she was sniffing around all the same.

“It is an exciting time for us all,” Lena said.

The other woman nodded. “And scary, too, I imagine. If you listen to all those rumors about missing test pilots, launch pad explosions. All that crazy talk must make you a little jittery.”

 _Nedelin_ , Lena thought. The ICBM disaster that no one could acknowledge, but everyone knew about. A hundred military and civilian personnel gone in an instant. This woman was really pushing it.

“I don’t encourage rumors, Comrade Rodaski.”

“Maggie,” she said. Then, without a speck of hesitation, she did something startling. Outrageous even. Before Lena could step away, before she could hold up her hands to stop her, Maggie reached up and grabbed Lena by the shoulders, pulling her in for a cheek kiss. Lena’s heart stopped at the touch of those lips, at the heat emanating from her skin. Then just as abruptly, the war hero in the strapless gown stepped back. She was holding a thin slip of paper between her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I thought it was a tag sticking out, but clearly you’re too upscale for store-bought fashions.”

Lena felt the blood drain from her face. _Olsen_ , she thought. The American had tried to— _oh god_. Maggie’s eyes were running over the paper, over the words.

She flashed that smile again and passed it over to her.

“It seems you have a suitor.”

Lena forced a smile as she tried to take in the message, the non-Embassy number that was scrawled next to it. Olsen had been targeting her. This was a pre-planned approach.

 _I hear the Northern Lights are lovely this time of year,_ it read.

Lena raised her eyes and looked at Maggie. “Yes, I suppose,” she said. “He must be quite a romantic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story James tells about the embassy prank calls is true. It was related by a friend who was on staff there during the Reagan years. He calls it the original vaguebooking.


	10. Attachment Theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of a longer update. Will be adding more in the coming days. Maybe tonight if I can get my act together.

Lena had never been inside the Star City Hydrolab, for good reason. Not since that childhood trip to the Black Sea, one of the few times Lionel had come along with the family, had she wanted to enter anything resembling an aquarium.

When Lionel came, there was almost no time to play on the white sands, to swim and make those fleeting friendships with the children of other summering party members. He would wake them up early, barking at them to finish their breakfast and dress, before dragging them out for a tour of a chemical plant, or if they were lucky, the tidepools at the Vadvarin Marine center.

She remembered one morning, how he’d delighted after Lex stuck his finger into the startled maw of a sea anemone, sputtering as the opening, lined with kelp green cilia, constricted around it.

 “It doesn’t hurt,” Lex had said, turning back to Lena as if he’d expected her to laugh at him.

“Doesn’t hurt _you_ ,” Lena said. 

Lex pulled his finger out and shook off the water. “Papa, it feels numb. Is it poison?”

Lionel nodded, oblivious to his son’s unease. “Yes, it releases a toxin, but not strong enough for humans. If you were prey of a suitable size, you’d feel it. That’s for certain.” He chuckled and crouched down to place his hand on Lena’s shoulder. “Look over there, Lena Lionelovna. Can you see the other one? Underneath that small shelf of rock?”

He pointed to another organism, another grey, green lump stuck to the rock, the same streaks of reddish brown around its opening. “Can you see any difference?”

“No,” Lex said before Lena could answer. Then rather contemptuously, he added. “Just another slimy lump of sentience free life sitting motionless in the water. Imagine, millions of years to make _that_.”

Lena didn’t respond. Lex was prone to showing off, trying to regain Lionel’s attention when he’d turned it on Lena or someone else, and it usually never worked. For while Lionel admired his son’s brashness and intelligence, he was seeking curiosity in his child, a wonder that Lex’s mien of superiority quickly extinguished. Lena saw Lionel’s grin wilt like the organism in front of them, his mouth closing over those wolf-like incisors.

“That’s the beauty, Lex,” he said. “You can’t make anything worthwhile without taking the time.”

Lena set her gaze back on the tidepool, feeling the pressure of her father’s gaze. She knew that she was being tested, being compared with Lex, although for what purpose she wasn’t sure.

 _Look for patterns_ , she thought. Like those puzzles Lionel made her do, with the animals with seven toes, the birds with missing talons. _Find the break._

She let her eyes run along the base of the rock, catching a rhythm in the creatures’ shapes and colors, from jagged to soft, spiny and hostile bright to amorphous and dull, until she saw it.

“That one,” she said, pointing to Lex’s creature, “the bottom is different.” She pointed to hers. “This one has a cone.”

 “Yes,” Lionel said, his voice lifting. “And you’ll see that Lex’s friend is attached to a harder surface, via a basal disc. Yours has burrowed down into the sand. Hydrostatic action.”

Lena blinked at the word and Lex saw her confusion.  “I know what that is,” he said, giving Lena a sly glance. “You showed me, Papa. The Pythagorean cup.”

“That’s one example,” Lionel said. He leaned in closer to Lena. “This one burrows into the mud and sand, anchors itself, whereas that one uses even suction.”

Lena’s mind jumped to Lex, to how each of them struggled to gain traction with their father in different ways. Lex was aggressive, practically begging to be seen and heard, whereas Lena, uncertain of where she stood in the family, stayed calm and even and demanded nothing.

She frowned then. “So, they’re not related.”

If Lionel saw the distress on her face, he didn’t acknowledge it. He beamed instead.

“Excellent, Lena. And no, not in the slightest. It’s the environment that shaped them. Led them to evolve the same camouflage, the almost same defenses—although that one’s,” he said, pointing to Lena’s anemone,  “are a little more poisonous.”

“Convergent evolution,” Lex said. “The environment shapes the creature. Like Communism will shape the people.”

 _Oh, how you try,_ Lena thought sadly.

From that morning, a thick and claustrophobic haze enveloped Lena’s thoughts. They were all being shaped, by things outside of them they couldn’t control, by the environment, by the system, by Lionel and Lillian’s manipulations. She came back to see the sharks and cuttlefish inside their pitifully small tanks, their lives shaped and shrunken from confinement, cut off from the sea. Lena didn’t want to be shaped. She didn’t want to see others be controlled and manipulated. She worked hard, studying the mind, trying to find ways to help people break free of the psychological prisons imposed upon them, and when that didn’t work, when Lillian had trapped her firmly back inside the Soviet system, the confines of the earth itself.  

The Hydrolab reminded her of the Vadvarin. An aquarium for human beings, it was an enormous domelike structure with a vaulted metal ceiling, a 23-meter diameter and a pool the depth of 15 meters. Surrounding the submerged area were portals through which technicians observed the cosmonauts as they trained, but Lena, hating that feeling of confinement, had opted for one of the upper decks from which the cosmonauts, in their heavy suits, were lowered into the water by crane.

Directly below her was a replica of the Zvezda craft, minus Lena’s cluster engines that would fall off once it hit the upper atmosphere. The redesign was going remarkably well, faster than even the most optimistic timeline. Already, there had been several successful tests, and J’onn suggested that the fuel saved would save a great deal in weight.

Nothing had happened after that encounter with James Olsen at Spaso House. She had not called that number, although she was certain that the KGB woman would follow that up. That look she gave Lena after kissing her was far more than the smirk of a gossip. War hero. Rodaski.

Lena had been so incensed, she’d done some covert research on her. Lieutenant Magdalena Rodaski had apparently not only smashed a tank into a building full of German snipers, collapsing it and them into rubble, but had helped take a German town later in the war, a key stronghold of weapons and supplies. Lena didn’t like KGB agents, but she disliked them more when they showed genuine bravery and integrity.

She could do nothing now but keep her head down, work on seeing through the design through the testing stages and, with luck, beyond. If some new information could be gleaned, she would keep it to herself until a trustworthy and less dangerous overture came forward. The launch window was early November and the Kremlin was unforgiving.

The four-cosmonaut team, Borodin, Monelev, Schott, and Starikov, were practicing the release of the payload through the rear hatch of the craft. It was a risky procedure that left Borodin alone inside, piloting the Zvezda. Although the payload would be weightless, its size meant that a spring ejector used for most satellite drops was out of the question. Instead, Schott and Monelev would shift the payload from the hatch as Kara Starikov acted as a spotter of sorts, checking the integrity of braided steel tethers, providing light when needed.

Around them swam a team of four divers, there to respond quickly should something go awry.

 _No such team in space_ , Lena thought, no helpful spirits to help guide one back inside if a tether snapped or a piece of random space debris, spinning five miles per second punctured a suit.

Her hands gripped the railing as Schott and Monelev had pushed off gently from the craft, staying afloat in place as the hatch to the Zvezda lifted.

She had to get a look at it. She knew the weight and dimensions of the payload, but she needed to see how the cosmonauts would unload it from the ship. There might be a clue in their movements, in the safety precautions they took that would give her an idea of what was inside.

Slowly, like the tongue of some great undersea creature, the payload emerged, nudged out on a loading board, which would retract once the two men released it from its restraints.

And it was…nothing. Not a missile canister, not the spiny, bulbous form of a satellite, no thrusters to readjust its orbit. It looked like a coffin or a water tank, with no controls or visible contours to reveal function or purpose. Then there was the strange matter of timing. The way the technicians were checking their watches and staring glumly at the digital clock above the pool as it counted down the seconds.

Monelev signaled to Kara, and Lena could see that some conversation was taking place. She wasn’t privy to the radio frequency, although she could hear short bursts of static coming from the earpieces of the white-coated technicians around her on the deck. But she could tell from Kara’s movements, from the way she bent to recheck the equipment that it was serious. She seemed to be warning Monelev, telling him to stop.

Monelev waved her off and Kara straightened, watching in what looked like shock and surprise as he undid the final clamp that shackled the payload to the edge.

“They won’t be able to get far away enough before ignition,” muttered a technician. Lena looked up at him and he blanched, taking a step away.

“Ignition,” Lena said.

He held up his hand. “I am sorry, Comrade Engineer. I spoke of something else.”

They both turned to the sound of a muffled, metallic groan as the dock holding the payload ground and snapped. Lena ran to the edge to see the water roiling as the payload, now tilted downward, slid off the ledge, catching Schott beneath its weight. It was sinking. Fast. And unable to help herself, Lena turned to the technician, anger evident in her voice. “It is the same _weight_?”

He nodded grimly. “We have lightened it, of course, but not by much.”

“Why?” The question came out suddenly and was tinged with irritation. “Why would you…”

His brows knitted. “Keep your questions to yourself, Engineer,” he said.

“Preposterous,” Lena spat.

The claxon sounded in the chamber, loud and shrill and blue-grey of the room went red under the emergency lights.

Lena could see a flurry of divers scattered around the bottom of the tank; they were trying to push the thing away from him, but the cosmonaut was trapped, and Lena could see a streak of air bubbles now, rising to the surface. His suit had been punctured.

 “His suit’s been breached,” she said to the technician. “Get him some help!” she shouted to the technician. Monelev and the divers were still trying stupidly to pull the thing off, but the object was jammed now, between the arm of the craft and the pool wall, and unlike the Zvezda, Borodin could not pilot the thing into a different angle.

Monelev gestured to Kara, to pull the tether, Lena assumed. She vehemently signaled a refusal. All that would do was tear into the suit. Instead, she saw Starikov untethering herself, pushing off the craft and down into the water, as above her the crane lowered, its hooks clumsily attempting to find purchase on the payload, like an absurd and hopeless arcade game.

Monelev tried to dive, to follow Kara to the bottom of the pool, but his suit was too large and too clumsy. And then suddenly, with a quick and silent jerk the payload shifted, the way a building or a large vehicle might flip sideways in an earthquake, and then it looked as if Kara was pushing Schott, suit and all, to the surface of the pool, kicking mightily until the two of them emerged from the water. Kara, now supported by the divers, had her arm under his now. With her other, she unfasted Schott’s helmet and pulled it away with a slick and simple gesture. Water spilled from the helmet, from the neck of the suit as the young cadet choked and sputtered. Then with the help of the divers, Kara pulled off her own, turning the cadet to take his face in her hands. She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes filled with concern before she shot an angry glance at the technicians above.  

“Get that crane here!” she yelled. “He needs medical attention!”

Monelev, his helmet keeping him thankfully silent, raised his hand in agreement. Schott was coughing still, struggling for breath.

“Medics!” Starikov shouted again, her voice gruff. She looked up again and her eyes met Lena’s. For a second, Lena felt her heart shrink at the anger in the cadet’s face, felt a cold sweat break across her forehead. _It wasn’t me,_ she wanted to say. _I—_

And then Kara smiled, sadly and just for a second, but it was there. That same secretive smile she’d given Lena in the cabin two weeks before. Then she turned her attention back to Schott, helped the divers attach the crane to the back of his suit.

How had she done it? Lena wondered.

And then she remembered another conversation from that day at the Aquarium.

“Do you think, Papa,” Lena asked, “that if these creatures look the same without being related, that there are creatures on other planets that look like us?”

Lex had laughed at the question, certain that Lionel would, too.

But Lionel had only turned Lena away from tidepools and gently placed a finger over his daughter’s lips. Not to stifle a child’s fancy, but to stop a line of inquiry that was going too far.

 “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps they might look like us. But they would still be different in some fundamental way. And they would carry different dangers with them, too.”

Lena pushed the thought away and watched as Schott was raised to the deck, his suit dripping and his hair mussed. He was still coughing and there was a severe rent in the leg of his suit, a gash in the lining through which Lena could see a slick of blood over flesh. He was looking down into the pool as if he was leaving behind his last hope, his face wet with chlorine and tears. He knew it, too. If the debacle hadn’t injured him out of the running, then his competence would certainly be questioned.

 _Dear Schott_ , Lena thought. _Let in only to be the first shoved out._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive liberties taken. First spacewalk didn't happen until 1965 with Alexei Leonov. Also, the Star City training center was up and running from 1961, but I have NO IDEA if they used a neutral buoyancy chamber to train cosmonauts that far back. Most of my information is coming from current articles about the facility. But fic, so... (;


	11. The Good Life

 

Kara came the last night Astra visited their home.

Astra Imzeyevna. Alex’s favorite person in the universe. It was an affection that went far beyond her favorite teacher, Nadiya Peskowitz, beyond her adoration of chanteuse Vera Galinaya, and sometimes even her own parents. Whenever Astra came to visit, Alex lost whatever childlike self-composure she had, running down the walkway of the house and throwing herself into the woman’s arms.

Astra would always catch her, would always lift her to the sky and spin her until the two were dizzy with laughter. Then she’d lower her gently to the ground and run a hand through the girl’s auburn hair.

“Hello, little one,” she’d say. Three words that always made Alex feel big. 

And Astra was big, a hero of the Revolution. She had been a partisan fighter against the White Army; She was a scientist and an ecologist, and she could tell Alex the names of every flower and name every constellation that lit the sky above Trenevosk. She was also a renowned poet, although her work, Jeremiah confided, had long been banned.

 _Banned_ ,Alex thought. It sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world.

“Can I be banned one day, Papa?” she asked, looking over the volume of verse Astra had given the family for safe keeping. It smelled of leather and pressed flowers, the scent of Astra’s adventures.

Jeremiah laughed then, a little grimly, Alex noticed. Then he put the volume on Alex’s bookshelf. “Believe me, you wouldn’t like that very much.” 

Astra brought Alex other gifts, too, like the microscope, and once the key from what she claimed was a bona fide treasure chest.

“A ship off the coast of Thessaloniki,” Astra told her, “and there were machines inside, machines far too advanced for an ancient Macedonian fishing vessel. It is a bit rusty, but I hope you like it.”

But Alex didn’t see rust. The key was of a bronzish color, its edges rough and worn by the water, but in the areas where it was cracked were streaks of translucent light that shone even with the candles out. 

As Alex got older and busier, Astra’s visits became fewer and far between. Sometimes when she remembered to ask, Eliza would tell her that she was “traveling” and “helping people in the territories,” answers that only offered scraps to the young girl’s imagination. But she kept the strange key and the book of verses, committing the poems to memory, pretending to understand what would later read as very clear references to love making as “new constellations” and “animal species” Astra had discovered somewhere.

Astra’s final visit was in Alex’s thirteenth year, a bad one, full of tense exchanges between her parents, who now seemed to be taking out some unnamed conflict on her.

 “Alex, it’s time for you to focus on your studies,” Jeremiah said, “No more playing around with those village kids.” They began sending her to Adam Levoski, a tutor of chemistry and biology, who rapped Alex’s knuckles with a ruler whenever she made a mistake or got lost in thought. 

And it was so, so easy to get lost now. Lost in wondering why the radio announced bumper harvests while Eliza’s patients all showed symptoms of malnutrition. In why Stalin pronounced that life was “good” while all around her people’s faces were sallow and full of fear. Lost in why the posters and the cinema and music all gushed about the importance of community and shared joy, while everyone around her complained and whispered turned in their loved ones for sedition. Even her own parents who’d once confided in her, who’d entrusted her with the hidden garden and the secret food stores from which Eliza fed their patients, had become closed-lipped and secretive.

All that wondering and getting lost. It hurt. So much more than a sharp rap on the fingers.

 So on that last night, when Astra Imzeyevna made her final appearance, Alex saw hope for the first time in months. Surely, Astra had come to rescue her, to take her away from the cloud of brutal contradictions now smothering her and those she loved.

When she ran up to her this time, Astra took a step back and the two of them laughed, noting the difference in height.

“Not so little anymore,” she said.

"No," Alex grinned, marveling at the sight before her. Astra never seemed to age, she thought. She was always so shockingly well-kempt, so stunningly beautiful and healthy even after long, often brutal journeys from the Caucasus or Siberia. She took her by the arm and started to lead her inside, “I have been using the microscope you gave me. I’ve got a collection of samples. Do you want to see?”

“Alexandra!”

Eliza stood in the doorway, arms folded, giving Alex that caustic look she gave her whenever she spoke back. Jeremiah was there as well, his face drawn and thoughtful.

"But she's here, Mama," Alex said, her voice still full of cheer. At that, Eliza’s expression softened and she walked up to slip an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Astra has come a long way, Alesha. Let her rest.”

Astra bent and placed a kiss on Alex’s forehead. “I will speak to you in the morning, Alex.” Then she pulled something from her pocket, It was hard like a stone and wrapped in lavender paper. Then Astra gave her arm one last squeeze and followed Jeremiah out into the field.

Alex awoke that night to voices. Her father and Astra were arguing.

 “There is no other way. If I had one, I would have taken that option. They will do horrible things. Dissect her. I’ve seen them do it to—”

“We’re being watched as it is,” Jeremiah said.

 _Dissect?_ Alex thought. Had Astra brought them a pig? Perhaps a dog even? 

“I have identity papers for her. Perfect forgeries, stamped with the seal of members of the inner politburo. No one will <em>dare</em> question them. You can say she is a cousin. Orphaned.”

<em>A cousin?<em> Alex thought. A girl then? Who would dissect a girl?

“Can’t you get her out, to China?" Jeremiah said, his tone laden with exhaustion. "Germany or the Americas even.”

“They would do the same to her. Even worse, perhaps. Her only chance is to hide in plain sight. Trust me on this, Jeremiah," Astra said. "I have rarely asked you for anything. You must do this for me. It's not just for the sake of family. There are repercussions for the entire world."

"I know that, but--"

They continued like that, circling each other, talking about experiments, the dangers involved in something or someone. Alex couldn't remember when she finally drifted off to sleep and when she awoke, the haze of sleep and the excitement over Astra's visit clouded her memory of the conversation.

As she came down the broad wooden staircase, she saw her. A slight, blond girl, perhaps a year or so younger than Alex. She was sitting in Alex’s chair, shoveling down a thick portion of porridge from Alex’s bowl. Just like that annoying little girl in the story. Alex had never understood that story or why the little girl had gotten away. She suspected, that as with other fairy tales, there must have been some horrific earlier version somewhere in the past, the girl devoured, her long locks used to stuff the baby bear's pillow. 

 “Mama?” Alex called out. Her eyes locked on the girl's. “Who is this?”

“Mama, who is this?” the girl whispered back.

"Mama?"

"Mama?" The girl grinned at her like it was a game and Alex glared at her. She took a step closer and sneered at the now empty bow. 

“Are you some kind of imbecile?”

“Hey!” 

Both girls turned to see Eliza storming into the room. She took Alex by the shoulder and gave her a hard, disapproving shake. “You do not use that word in this house,” she said. “Ever."

"Mother who is this? Tell me what is going on."

"Tell me..."the girl said, as if practicing the words, "...mother. Going on."

Eliza held up a hand and the girl went silent.

"Alex, this is Kara. I think. And she's going to be staying with us for a while."

“For how long?” Alex said, now regarding the girl with mild irritation. 

 “I don’t know, Alesha,” Eliza said. “But if I see any unkindness on your part, you’ll be punished. And you’re not to say anything about her presence to anyone until we've thought things through.”

“What things?” Alex said.

Eliza sighed and took a seat at the table. “I'm, I'm not quite sure yet. We're not. I’ve canceled your lessons with Levoski for the time being. And there will be no school for a week. I’ll say you’re ill."

Alex felt the air leave her lungs. No school. No lessons. This was a serious matter, indeed.   

"There are things you'll need to know, that your father and I need to learn and plan for," Eliza said. She got up again and took another bowl down from the cupboard, scooping in a smaller portion of porridge. As she brought it to the table, the strange girl reached for it, and Eliza had to lift it away from her. She shook her head at the girl and smiled. "I'll get you more."

She placed the bowl in front of Alex and lowered her voice. "We're going to need you with us, Alex," she said. There was a trace of fear in those normally serene eyes. "I know you're still growing up and I'm asking too much of you, but we've no other choice."

Alex pressed her hands around the side of the bowl to keep them from shaking. Her mother had just opened up to her again, acknowledged for just an instant, her daughter's feelings. She pushed the bowl gently across the table to that strange girl sitting across from her. 

"I'm not hungry," she said, giving the girl the gamest smile she could muster. "You take it."

Eliza reached over and took Alex's hand.  "Thank you."

And with that, the bad year of family secrets ended, for now they had a secret they had to keep from the world.

#

Alex’s awoke to darkness and cold, the night, save the ringing in her ears, coated in silence. She was on her back, her body so heavy, she felt planted, as if the taiga itself were nestling around her for warmth. She opened her mouth, felt the resistant sting of dry lips as she took in a breath. With one shaky hand, she pressed into the earth at her side, feeling the comfort of the cold leaves and mud as she pushed herself into a sitting position. She could smell ozone in the air, as if there'd been a sudden storm, but the sky was the uniform white of a threatened snow.

The memories flowed back into her.

The stream.

The Totem.

The man. An American, perhaps. And that thing. It was gone.

Head throbbing, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness until the black spires of the larch trees grew distinct from the deep blue of encroaching dawn. Her rifle lay on the ground beside her. 

She stood, her legs wobbly and her hands pushed out awkwardly in front of her. Fortunately, the tussle in the brush had left a visible path and she found her pack easily. She knelt, fumbling for her canteen, twisting it open and taking a long pull of the water. It was cold and tasted of minerals and she had to force herself to stop, to leave some for later.

For a long moment, she sat there, breathing heavily, taking in the past few hours. Jami was waiting for her at home. Perhaps not worried yet, but certainly wondering. The girl knew well not to call in authorities and invite attention. But the sooner she got back, the better.

A dark shadow in her peripheral vision caught her eye. It was the young man, his body motionless, his back bent over a stone so that he looked partially suspended.

Grasping for her rifle, crept toward him. He was lying face up. The mask had been torn off and there was a wound in the middle of his forehead. But as she crouched to examine it more closely, she saw it hadn't been made by a bullet. It was burn mark, precise, the wound cauterized before it had even begun to bleed.

Whatever that thing was had killed him.

But why not her?

The man’s rifle was a foot from his hand. Alex reached over and lifted the barrel, smelling the acrid note of a recent firing. She saw it then, a glasslike fragment in the undergrowth, glowing like a firefly on a branch. The American must have hit the thing. So, the killing was self-defense?

She plucked a cloth from her pack and bent to pick up the object. It wasn’t glass, more like a strange translucent metal, smooth under her thumbs, but faceted like a jewel. It felt warm as well and Alex balked for an instant, wondering if that warmth came from radiation. But there was no time to think about that. She wrapped it in a cloth and stuffed it into her pack. Then she went back to kneel next to the body, starting as the radio on the man’s wrist crackled with the sound of a distant voice.Tired now. Routine. 

“Aden 53, Aden 53, this is Land’s End, Over. Aden 53, do you copy?”

They must have been trying for hours. With shaking hands, Alex lifted the man’s arm and gently tugged the band up over his stiff and swollen wrist. If he couldn’t answer her questions, then maybe they could.

She heard the hurried rustle of footsteps approaching. Heard voices, speaking in Russian.

_Shit._

She slung her pack over her shoulder and snatched up the rifle, hurrying into the trees until she came to an open clearing. She’d be visible there, exposed. She crouched down in the brush and saw them. Two large men, wearing what looked to be the full gear of Soviet special forces. They were well equipped for the weather, too, with full packs and thick, well-made boots. Either they'd been out in the taiga for a while, or they were planning to be.

“Someone was here,” one of them said. He was staring down at the trampled grass, at Alex’s boot prints in the mud and the leaves. Backs to one another, the men began scanning the area in a circular motion, rifles out and ready to fire on the first sound.

Alex hunched further into the thicket, forcing herself to clear her mind, to focus only on the moment as she’d been taught in the War— on what she _could_ do.

The radio crackled again.

“Aden 53,” said the tired and hopeless voice, “ Going off protocol but we’re worried about you, pal. Pick up, please.”

 _Stupid,_ Alex thought, her heart racing. _Stupid!_

The soldiers whipped around in her direction as the radio sounded again. One of the men signaled to the other to move forward.

“Go. I’ll cover you,” he said.

The other man stepped forward, his eyes cold and confident.

“Show yourself,” he called out.

He cocked his rifle as he stepped closer, close enough for Alex to make out his expression, the color of his eyes. She had one chance. She reached into the pack and pulled out the radio, lifting it to her lips.

 “This is Aden-53,” she whispered.

The soldiers cocked their heads to the sound and then Alex raised her arm and hurled the radio band as far as she could in the opposite direction.

 _Please, please_ , she thought.

As it sailed through the air, the voice came through, loud and clear. “We were worried about you, buddy. Hot damn! What are your coordinates? Over.”

The soldiers ran in the direction of the radio as Alex barreled the other way across the clearing, hoping against hope that the loud American’s voice would drown out the sound of her footsteps. As she dove into the forest, she glanced back, saw the men, bending over to dig through the grass.

“It’s here!” he yelled. They hadn’t spotted her. Alex kept running, the sound of their voices drowned out by her breath and the rising wind. She'd hurry home. Stay quiet for a few days and see to her patients while she thought about the next step. There was a game being played between her countrymen and the Americans. And as usual, the people were being kept unaware of the rules and the price.


	12. Counterweight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another war flashback for the turbulent week of Sanvers news.

Moscow 1941

In the following days, the young lieutenant continued to make almost daily visits to the field hospital as more members of the twentieth broke free from the German encirclement. Thousands of Soviet soldiers had already perished, either from starvation or enemy sharpshooters and those who’d managed to escape had done so stepping over the bodies of their compatriots. They’d hidden for days in freezing temperatures, inching their way back to Moscow under cover of night.

Other than a few stolen moments, however, there’d been no time to regain the intimacy of that snow-dusted evening at the barracks. Alex was busy tending to the wounded, and sometimes to captured Germans. As the weather turned colder, she put her energies into developing methods to treat frostbite cases, getting the men back to the front and staving off necrosis in third-degree burns.

But there were those moments when she might glance up from cleaning a wound or checking the dosage in an intravenous feed and catch the other woman watching her, and sometimes, Maggie’s hardened, weary expression would even loosen into a smile. That smile. How was smiling like that even possible in such surroundings?

But when Alex would open her mouth to speak, to ask a question, anything to allow that brief connection to continue, Maggie would avert her eyes and walk away. It was always that same cycle of hope and disappointment, a subtly comic underscore to the daily suffering, the wounds bad enough to send her vomiting outside in the snow. How, Alex wondered, could so much of her life now hinge upon a few brief encounters, on small gestures and glances, rather than the letters that were finally coming through from Dmitri?

Her sweetheart, it seemed, was now far away from the front. He was working as a chemist in an explosives factory in the East. In a masterstroke of efficiency, Stalin had uprooted all industrial production, moving it to the interior of the country to keep munitions and materials safely out of German hands.

 _I cannot tell you where I am_ , Dmitri wrote, _nor what I am doing. I suppose I cannot tell you much of anything other than that I am safe. I wanted to send for you. I even asked if I married you whether you would be allowed to join me here, but it is not permitted. All is secret. Please understand that I intend to as soon as I am able. Until then, stay safe, my love._

My love.

It was the first time he had made such a declaration, even after they had spent all that time together, in the lab, stealing kisses in Trenevosk’s lone cinema or behind the farmhouse. Those words should have felt momentous. They should have made Alex feel lighter, but instead, they dropped off the page like lead.

And why, when just a mere day after receiving that letter, did Alex only feel her heart lift at the sight of Maggie hurrying toward her in the corridor? The lieutenant was still shivering from the outside, her long red army coat dusted with snow, and as she came closer, Alex felt as if gravity were fleeing her insides.

She lifted her arm in a wave. “I—I was hoping to see you,” she called out, offering a smile.

“Not now, Danvers.” Maggie nodded abruptly and walked past her, causing Alex’s heart to slam back down in her stomach. She bit her lip and without thinking, turned heel and followed. Her body felt hot, despite the cold that blasted through the tarp now covering the shell-shattered windows. There had been more air raids of late, although the Germans did not have the air power of the Soviets, usually coming in paltry squadrons of ten or more planes. Those were scare tactics, distractions, and easily fought off by the anti-aircraft gunners atop the buildings, but they did their damage.

Alex didn’t call after Maggie, but she couldn’t stop following either. She felt dazed, ignoring the calls from the bedridden patients as she tailed her through the burn ward and into a narrow corridor smelling of iodine and wax.

She watched as Maggie pushed past a guard, entering a large hall where some of the wounded were being sequestered. This wasn’t part of Alex’s rounds. She’d been told in no vague terms that it was off limits unless requested, but now she found herself giving that same guard an apologetic glance and flashing her medical ID.

She glanced around the large room. In the center, a small group higher ranking officers sat around a card table, smoking and playing cards. Here, in this repurposed ballroom, the beds were spaced far apart, each one encircled by makeshift curtains either to maintain privacy or hide the identities of the wounded. Maggie stopped in front of one of the beds and lifted the curtain. Alex was just close enough now to catch the glimmer of polished brass on a collar, the crisp greenish gray uniform of an NKVD officer as he stood rigidly near an occupied bed. She felt her stomach lurch and stopped.

They were everywhere of late, sauntering around the hospital, asking questions where they weren’t wanted, interrupting operations sometimes.

“Idiots,” she’d heard a surgeon spit just a few days before.

The nurse standing near him had wisely clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t.”

_Don’t._

That’s what Eliza had said to Jeremiah. So many, many times. When the military police came into town, questioning the farmers, dragging away the kulaks and sometimes shooting them in their own houses. Jeremiah had barely been able to contain himself when it wasn’t him. But when that officer had come into their home, frightening Kara and questioning Jeremiah about his research—Were his methods not a direct contradiction of Lysenkoism? Was he not wasting the resources and time of the Soviet people? Contributing to the famine that the TASS news agency said was a capitalist rumor? Jeremiah had almost lost it, had almost lost his life then. To have these know-nothings talking about plant biology. About harvests and seasons.

Eliza watched him carefully, noting her husband’s expression as he sat and answered those questions, fists clenched tightly enough to draw blood in his palms. She would stand behind the backs of NKVD officers, her eyes locked on his, and mouth the word.

_Don’t._

He didn’t. Not that it mattered.

One night, just a month or so later, when things had calmed a bit--It always happened when you thought you might be safe--Alex and Eliza waited for Jeremiah and Kara at that same cinema where she and Dmitri necked and held hands. They were going to see _Volga-Volga,_ Stalin’s favorite musical. It was a joke of sorts and perhaps an unconscious dread-lined wish--as if the dictator might somehow exonerate them through the flicker of the projector light.

They should have chosen the detective film, Alex would think later. For neither Jeremiah nor Kara ever came.

Alex swallowed back the memory and felt her hands go damp with sweat. She stepped closer to the curtain and paused in front of a supply cabinet, pretending to peruse the small pharmacy behind the glass. Her attention was caught by the label on one of the bottles. Penicillin. The new miracle drug she’d read about in a contraband British medical journal. They were testing it out, on the officers first, of course.

The NKVD were here to question the recent escapes, for their former prisoner status now made them automatically suspect. The first who’d broken out of the cauldrons were lucky. They’d come in large enough numbers and received no more than a cursory interrogation. But those less fortunate, those who’d been cut off or wounded in the escape, and who’d still managed to make it back alone and desperate. They were traitors by virtue of having suffered longer. Suffered more.

Maggie dropped the curtain and Alex caught a glimpse of the man’s startled expression as he turned to face her. He held his clipboard to his chest like a shield.

“Can I be of assistance, Comrade?” he said.

Maggie’s silhouette took a purposeful step toward him and Alex nearly gasped as the smaller woman planted her feet. 

“Yes. You can tell me why you’re interrogating a woman who is barely conscious.”

The man was silent for a moment and then he said, in a forced show of confidence, “it’s protocol.”

“May I?” Maggie’s shadow reached for the clipboard and Alex watched, stupefied as the officer then handed it over to her, looking on passively as Maggie flipped through the pages.

After a moment, Maggie said, “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself, Comrade?”

“All escapees need to be vetted for their political loyalties—”

“But not until they’re away from the front lines,” Maggie said. “Under order 312, front-line questioning of both prisoners and escapees should concern themselves only with questions of immediate tactical value. And…” Alex saw her head nod, doing a once over of the man’s uniform, “political questioning is left to higher echelons, am I right?”

“I’m a captain,” the man said.

“Which directorate?”

Alex’s reached up and clasped her hands over her mouth. She wanted to throw back the curtain and scream at Maggie to stop. Couldn’t she see? Didn’t she know the danger she was in?

But the man’s voice was lower now, fearful. “Are you _SHMERSH_.”

SHMERSH. The word seemed to curdle in the man’s throat. As it should have. Those wormlike informants were everywhere, accountable to no one and given free rein to tattle if you denied them so much as your cigarette ration.

“Would you believe me if I said ‘no?’” Maggie said, “Let’s just say I’m a stickler. And loyal to those I fight alongside. This woman just got out of a very bad place. It bothers me to see you questioning her loyalty before she’s barely had a chance to recover.” She passed him back the clipboard. “I appreciate you letting me take a look.”

The man took the clipboard and lowered it to his side. He seemed to be catching his own breath.

“Listen, Captain…”

“Gessen.”

“Captain Gessen.” Maggie began pacing and Alex saw her raise her hand to her chin. “I know this is part of your job. When people break out on their own, they look suspect, but right now there are thousands of our soldiers who’ve broken out--and for what? To die in the woods? Cold and afraid and surrounded by Nazis? I’m sure you’ll agree that our first priority is to do everything we can ensure they make it out. The sooner we do that, the less chance they _will_ go turncoat.”She stopped and faced him. “We’re losing men, Captain. Good men and women. And we can’t afford that.”

To Alex’s surprise, the Captain nodded.

“You’ve got courage, Lieutenant,” he said, nodding toward the bed, “and loyalty to stand up for her like that.”

“Just doing the bare minimum, Sir,” Maggie said, and with that, she saluted him.

He turned toward the curtain and nodded to her. “Find out what you can and report back to me.”

“Of course, Captain. And thank you.”

Alex spun around, pretending to fuss with a package of gauze as he swept the curtain back and passed. She stayed frozen, eyes closed in mortification until Maggie spoke.

“You hiding, Danvers?”

“I’m sorry. I--I thought you had an emergency,” she said, feeling the warmth crawl up her face.

She turned back and peered through the opening. Maggie was sitting next to the patient’s bed, smiling casually as if that entire scene hadn’t occurred. 

“Well, you were right about that. This whole place is an emergency,” Maggie said, eyeing her. She nodded to the chair across from her and Alex suddenly couldn't stop herself. “That was…impressive. And terrifying. Do you know what they do? They took one of the patients out last night, just took him out and shot him.”

Maggie lifted a finger to her lips and eyed the woman in the bed.

“Right. Sorry.” Alex cleared her throat and stepped forward, drawing back a lopsided metal chair. Slowly, she sat down, folding her hands in front of her.

“So why were _you_ risking it?” Maggie said, the mirth leaving her expression.

“I...” Alex reached up and ran a hand through her hair, “I was worried about you.”

Maggie reared her head back. “About me?”

Alex bit her lip. “I thought you might get into trouble. And I was right about that.” She let out a nervous laugh.

“I always do.” Maggie looked down briefly and then met her eyes with such abruptness, Alex froze.

“You going soft on me?”

“No. No, I’m not, I just—”

A slow smile crept across her features. “Just kidding, Danvers.” She nodded to the patient, a heavily bandaged woman who lay there wheezing, one eyelid slightly lifted so that it looked as if she was watching them. 

“This is Nadezhda,” Maggie said. “Escaped with Piotr’s group and got lost it looks like. Spent ten days out there in the cold, no food. No fire.” She reached over and tucked a strand of the woman’s hair behind her ear. “She has a husband somewhere in Kiev, and a little boy. Doesn’t know where they are.”

Alex nodded, feeling a rush of admiration for the woman in front of her, and for Maggie. How did she manage it? To care and to fight and to risk her own integrity, her life even when all Alex could think about was survival? The thought flashed through her, just for an instant. There was a loneliness hiding inside all that self-possession. Did Maggie have anyone at home? Parents? Siblings? A lover even? She shoved away that last thought and glanced up to catch those dark eyes locked on her. 

“I only have a few minutes before I have to…”Alex fumbled for something to say, a pretext to ask the lieutenant if she was free after her shift, if perhaps she wanted a cigarette—Alex didn’t smoke-- or a cup of tea back at the barracks. She shook her head, aware that the other woman could probably see her confusion.

_For god's sake, this is a war and you’re behaving like a schoolgirl planning an outing._

But she couldn't stop herself. “Would you—"

The woman in the bed reached up and snatched Maggie by the wrist.

“He wouldn’t listen,” she rasped.

Maggie bent down and took the woman’s hands in her own. “Nadezhda. Shhh.”

She nodded to Alex and mouthed “water” and Alex got up and poured a glass from a basin next to the bed.

“Lieutenant Rodaski,” the woman said.

“Shhh,” Maggie said. “Drink first.”

Alex came to the bed and slipped her hand gently behind the woman’s head, lifting it until she could drink. She downed it quickly and Maggie reached over, thumbing the moisture from her lips.

“There are more back there. In the valley. Five hundred at least. The Germans are low on munitions. We--we broke out with boxes of MP-40s. Our men are guarding them. That’s why they can’t move. Only a few at a time. To come get help."

The woman’s words caught in her throat and she fell into a spate of wretched coughing. Alex gave her more water and Maggie pulled a notepad and a pen from her pocket, waiting until her body calmed and she was breathing evenly.

“Just go slowly," Maggie said, "tell me what you saw. Any coordinates? Landmarks?”

She leaned down, pressing her ear to the woman’s lips, scrawling rapidly on the paper as Nadezhda whispered. Then just as quickly, Maggie sat up, her expression both distant and determined. She pressed the back of her hand to the other woman’s cheek. “Rest, Nadyenka,” she said, using the gentle diminutive of her name. “We’re going to get them out of there.”

Maggie stood. Maggie stood and it seemed as if Alex didn't exist anymore. She barely nodded as she stepped past her and toward the opening in the curtain. Alex didn’t really mean to stop her. As she stood and reached out, she'd meant it as a gesture of support, her hand clasping the other woman’s shoulder, her fingers pressing into the thick wool of that coat as if they might burrow inside its warmth.

The lieutenant halted abruptly, her shoulders stiffening as she took in a long breath. Impatience perhaps. Alex felt a reflexive stab of shame. She opened her mouth to speak, to apologize for delaying her, but her voice caught as she heard the rustle of cloth and felt Maggie's hands covering her own. Without turning, she pulled her forward, gently, sliding Alex's fingers down through the opening in her coat, over the warm skin below her collarbone. Alex swore she could feel the other woman’s pulse thrumming.

Or perhaps it was her own.

And then, just as quickly, she felt Maggie’s fingers relaxing as she bent her head and pressed her lips against the back of Alex's hand. In that softest of touches, there was a sudden sensation of weight, of something pulling her toward its center, even as she felt her body go limp and faint. And then it was gone.

“Hold the fort, Danvers,” Maggie said, her voice hoarse. Without turning. Without so much as a nod, she released Alex from her grip and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was no order 312, although it was procedure during the earlier part of the war that political questioning occurred away from the front and was handled by higher-ranking members of military intelligence.


	13. Reverse Perspective

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for the long delay in posting. I wanted to finish another WIP in order to put my focus on this one. Updates should come more frequently from now on. Thank you for your patience and for reading.

 

Traffic and nearby high-rise construction muffled the crack of a boot against a door. The old church was now heavily boarded up, and the splintered edge of a doorframe jabbed painfully into Maggie’s side as she squeezed through the opening. She winced and trained her flashlight on the corner of the Narthex. A rat scurried out from under a pile of shredded newspaper. 

The fruit must have drawn it here. She could still smell that pungent, cidery odor long after they’d packed away all those strange specimens, warped and garish, their origins still unidentified. Not that the Directorate cared. After being hacked open and meticulously checked for contraband, all but a few samples were tossed out. Maggie had also ordered the communion wine tested, but it had drawn a negative for toxins or any of the fashionable narcotics being sold on the streets.

She knew though, that there was something more to this part of the story. Dmitrov had declared Covillev the victim of a poor trade. Likely some farmer had paid the priest with his vanity project and thinking to profit on the black market, Covillev had fallen for the pretty colors. Even long before the Revolution, there’d been concerted efforts to discover new varieties of fruits and vegetables capable of thriving in the Union’s harsher climates. Maggie had certainly seen more than one piece in Izvestiaabout some genius with a green thumb and big plans to bring jicama root or mangos to the workers, and even now, Krushchev’s corn campaigns were drawing sneers in every kitchen and cafeteria in the country. But those lurid colors, the innards whose seeds spidered out in bizarre patterns, didn’t seem like just another deranged result of Lysenkoism. She doubted, however, that anyone in the Directorate would listen. 

The operation—her operation, she had to remind herself—was going poorly. Ivan Arkov was off the case, sent down to shake out petty extortionists in Archangelsk, but the raid on the church had thrown too many into custody, and Dmitrov assigned some ‘extra help,’ operatives who had no qualms about using more outdated approaches—the thin flame of a lighter to a forearm, a rubber truncheon to the soles of the feet, sleep deprivation, all had been given tacit approval, and Maggie’s refusal to engage in such methods was being thrown back at her as incompetence.

Just that morning, she’d arrived to find Bondarev in Covillev’s cell, looking very much like a cat who’d just stolen a plate of sturgeon. The priest was sitting across from him, face pale and glistening with sweat, and against her better judgment, Maggie yanked Bondarev’s chair back. The legs grated painfully over the pocked concrete and all three in the room ground their teeth at the noise.

Maggie let go of the chair and then gently straightened the cleaner’s collar. “We don’t do that here, Comrade,” she said. “Perhaps you’ve gotten lost?”

Bondarev held her gaze for a moment and then shrugged as if to say ‘it’s your party.’ 

Maggie didn’t fear him, although many in her section did. Bondarev merely followed his orders with utmost enthusiasm, and he reacted to Maggie’s aggression with something bordering on delight, as if it were the only genuine means of communication and thus raised her in his estimation. 

“He doesn’t like me so much,” Bondarev said as he opened the door to leave, “but you, ‘Sawyer’” he grinned and stuck a finger out,  “ _you_  are a charmer.”

Maggie ignored him and took a seat across from the priest as the heavy door slammed shut behind them.

“Are you in pain,” Maggie said. “Did the gentleman do anything untoward?”

Covillev closed his eyes slowly and let out a breathy chuckle. “What a grand show of sympathy. It’s almost as if you think someone is watching you.”

“It wouldn’t change things either way,” she said. “I have questions. You have answers.” She pulled an envelope from her briefcase and removed two photos. She pressed the first one, an older and blurry black and white of a thin-faced man leaning against a car in front of the priest. “You recognize him?”

Covillev pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and Maggie spotted bruises on the back of his hand. “You know the answer to that. Roma Yetz. He was a member of my congregation until two short years ago. ”

“Was.”

Covillev raised his eyes to hers. “He left. People are free to come and go as they please.”

Maggie leaned forward as if about to let him in on a secret. “Look, we’ve got more than enough to put you away for corrupting youth. That’s not what I’m asking about.” She slid the second photo in front of him. A mug shot. “Now,  _this_  was taken shortly after his arrest in Havana. Funny, how he managed to get there so quickly after leaving your care. Most folks can’t get papers for a day trip to Smolensk.”

Covillev shrugged. “I don’t keep tabs on the faithless.”

“Maybe not,” Maggie said, “but imagine a staunch comrade, someone who’d managed an international travel visa pissing someone off enough to be picked up by our allies at Dirección de Inteligencia—who then released him? And to the Americans of all people.  Now, why would a washed-up former member of your rinky-dink cult be so important that he not only gets an exit visa to Cuba, but the U.S. is willing to bargain for him? That’s some serious dumb luck.”

Covillev’s breath quickened slightly, although it was difficult to tell if that was due to Maggie’s words or the pain he was experiencing. She pulled out an Order of the Cosmos tract and placed it on the table in front of him.

“Emilia gave this to me,” she said, “I’ve always found the art exquisite. The lines, the colors, so much more fluid and alive than that dour socialist realism we’ve got plastered from here to Kamchatka.” She shook her head appreciatively. “I had to know just who was responsible, so we visited your artist at his studio.”

“Did you?”

Maggie scratched her head. “Not his studio, you know. I mean no dissident Soviet artist worth their salt leaves their real work lying about. His other one. You know, in that abandoned bottling plant near Betro.”

She felt him watching her as she rummaged in her briefcase, saw him shift in his seat as she produced several expertly forged passports, and then added transit papers and residence permits to the pile. “Your friend has a multitude of talents.” She leaned back and regarded him curiously. “You’re not really a man of faith, are you, Covillev?”

Covillev let out a laugh, protracted and meant to throw her off, but Maggie just watched him and waited for that last burst of nervous energy to dissipate. Then she tilted her head and smiled. It was a gentle smile, understanding. “You’re not even a sleazy cult leader. That’s just another layer of padding for the network you’ve built, in the U.S. State Department, in the Direction Générale, and maybe even MI6. It’s a swell act. What I’d like to know is to what end?”

The priest was already shaking his head, his reaction too fast. He kept his eyes focused on a small trickle of condensation leaking from the cracked concrete wall behind her. 

“All of that baseless,” he said, “but I will tell you one thing. The ‘game’ as you call it is ensuring that humanity survives. On that matter, I am quite serious.”

His eyes locked with hers then and there was something about his tone, the cool certainty in his expression that sent a noticeable shudder through her.

“Survive what?” Maggie said, but it was too late. Covillev had managed to make even her jump and he wasn’t giving up anything else. Instead, he answered all further questions with the same lines from Ezekiel.

_I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light._

Nonsense, she thought. 

_The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures._

Maggie stepped into the sanctuary of the church, her beam flickering over the icons and the imagery, most of them tableaus of punishment and reward. Covillev might have been faking that holy roller persona, but the restoration work had made good on the sacred. All those deep hues and golden accents intended to radiate divine energy had been painstakingly unearthed and returned to a vivid life, only there was a newness to them. The gold was now tempered with streaks of green, and a color much more vibrant than the earthier, more traditional pigment.

Maggie leaned in closer, the beam of her flashlight halting on a scene of seven arks descending from the heavens, each of them containing a swaddled Christ child in various stages of infancy? Or was it the ascension itself? It was certainly prescient, Maggie thought, if not of the second coming of Christ than maybe Eadweard Muybridge. But as her eyes adjusted, she noted that the faces on the infants were far too distinct to be the same child. Two of them, she was certain, were girls. 

_In appearance their form was human._

She felt a sudden dizziness and stepped away. Icons used reverse perspective, their vanishing points placed outside of the painting, which sometimes gave her the sensation of standing in a hall of mirrors.  She closed her eyes to steady herself and in that brief instant, her mind flashed back to the war.

Usually, these visits were harsh but fleeting. The burst of a shell might jolt her awake from an afternoon drowse, the whine of a plane overhead might cause her heart to rabbit, and she’d find herself squeezing her napkin under the table, the sweat on her palms leaving damp stains in the cloth.

It was normal. Everyone who’d been there went through it. And really, she was one of the lucky ones. Not one of those poor souls waving a tin cup outside of the metro, gesturing to a string of medals on a worn and filthy uniform.

No, now she was standing amid a crowd, the air thick with the scent of damp wool and cigarette smoke. She heard music _. Cranes. Katyusha_. Cheering. A month into the Battle of Moscow, when things still seemed lost and the snow was thick, Stalin had called for a parade in the square. To defy the Germans, now a mere fifteen miles away. To boost morale.

She was standing on the sidelines, watching as the troops marched through the Square, those bright red banners and polish providing a welcome contrast to the pall of thick snow and smoke that coated city. She’d been wounded then, unable to join in, but she’d gone to watch, half her weight on the single crutch she’d been provided, the other supported by the girl—the woman—beside her.

_Alex._

Maggie remembered the feel of warm fingers as they slipped into the pocket of her greatcoat and curled around her own. She remembered the gentle shock of warm breath against her ear, and Alex's voice, soft and shy, yet somehow casting itself above the music and the shouts of the crowd.

_It’s so very cold, she'd said. Wouldn’t it be better to go inside?_

She muttered a soft curse and forced down the memory. One, just one, of the so very few good memories she had.

No going back in time.

No hindsight.

Reverse-perspective was a lie, meant to distract, to keep her from pushing ahead.

_Or was it?_

As she raised her eyes to the dome of Christ, another thought forced its way in and she let out a laugh.

The star map. She’d been making a sketch of it when Arkov raided the church, had gone over it for days, trying to see where the Great Bear might fit into Covillev’s theology, or if it might be a code word or a name. But what if the key wasn’t in the constellation itself, but the position from which one viewed it. Maggie leaned back further, trailing her flashlight’s beam up to the ceiling, laughing at herself even more as streaks of green and deep red emerged in the glass.

Were there coordinates hidden in the verses Covillev was so fond of spouting? Or in the numbers scrawled on that oily page from the newspaper?

Too obvious. A long shot.

But that’s when she remembered not numbers, but a string of words scrawled across another covert missive. One intended for a beautiful and brilliant engineer. 

_The Northern Lights are beautiful this time of year._


	14. A Dream for Every Star

“You are important. To this program. To me. To _all_ of us.”

The words were soft but clear and full of feeling. Lena stopped abruptly in the doorway of the hospital room, coloring slightly as she confronted the scene.

Schott sat on the edge of his bed in a tattered blue bathrobe, his injured leg bandaged and propped up on a chair. His shoulders were slumped and his head might have sunk even lower were Kara Starikov not cupping his cheeks as she spoke. She was bent over him, nearly pressing her forehead to his as she whispered what to Lena sounded like a prayer. “There will be other missions. This? This is only the first.”

Lena went still and drew in a quiet breath. Coming upon the two of them during that vulnerable exchange felt untoward, and seeing the usually aloof Starikov being so demonstrative unsettled her in a way she couldn’t pinpoint. Lena stood there, trying to isolate a feeling that veered between jealousy and hope, but as she tried to avert her gaze, Starikov caught it with a warm and reassuring smile. It was as if a beam of sunlight had suddenly struck through the blinds.

“Lena Lionelovna,” Kara said. The cadet straightened, not abruptly like a lover caught in a compromising position, but like a friend, a true friend in a place where vicious competition often hid beneath an exterior of enforced comradery. That smile turned into a grin, coaxing an awkward one from Lena as she stepped forward, offering up a package of sweets and a bottle of beer.

“The fare here is a bit dour,” she said. “I thought this might help.”

Schott smiled, but Lena could tell it took effort. He had dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks had hollowed as if he’d lost a stone overnight. He muttered a groggy 'thanks' and accepted the package, placing it on the table next to his bed. Starikov brushed her hand over his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“Oh, that _is_ kind,” she said and Lena felt herself relax. Perhaps her timing was not so poor at all.

“How are you feeling?” Lena asked. She was trying to keep her focus on the injured cadet, but she could feel Starikov’s eyes settling on her and her skin warmed despite the chill in the room. The temperature was dropping and those first snows would soon turn Star City into a curtain of white.

Schott mustered a smile. “I’ve been better. It is kind of you to…” he gestured to the gifts, “do this after I jeopardized the launch.”

“You did nothing of the sort,” Lena said, “ _that_ responsibility is theirs.”

Lena did nothing to indicate who _they_ were, but she caught Starikov’s reaction, her eyes going wide in mild astonishment, and perhaps a hint of agreement. She gave Schott’s shoulder another squeeze as if to say “See?” and the three of them fell into a brief, but awkward silence. It felt like a dare, Lena thought, who would move on to the next misgiving, the specifics that might give her further insight into why Zvezda was really being launched? Under Stalin, acknowledging that one thing was wrong meant a condemnation of the whole, thus condemning the one who objected. Things had improved under Khrushchev, but not nearly enough to let loose with one’s tongue.

Lena folded her hands and squeezed them tightly. It was a habit she’d developed to keep herself from fidgeting or grinding her teeth. She had always been a restless child, always moving, her thoughts racing faster than those of the people around her, even Lex.

“I’ll cop to an ulterior motive,” she said, taking a step closer to the bed. “Comrade Schott, you are proficient with the BESM?”

Winn Schott sat up and squinted at her in alarm. Cybernetics research had been an open secret in the Soviet military, but it was only a little under two years previous that the Party designated the computer as crucial to the future of the Union. Prior to that, certainly before Stalin’s death in 1953, computing technology was considered ideologically impure: the notion that machines could think was a capitalist fantasy, intended to replace the socially conscious worker with a passive machine. 

“STRELA was my first love, Comrade,” Schott said, referring to one of the first Soviet mainframes. "We called her Strelitsa." Lena laughed, encouraged by the hint of excitement in his voice. “We’re installing a mainframe at the Flight Control Complex. It won't be in full use for some time, but we're also working on a prototype for an eventual onboard system."

Schott’s mouth dropped open and he inched up further to the end of the bed. “The Argon.I'd heard rumors about the Lunar project. So...it’s a thing.”

Lena gave a cautious glance over at Kara, who took a step back. 

“It is,” Lena said. “Our people in the Design Bureau need help, and the human computers at the Control Complex need assistance and besides, you’ve already got clearance. We can bypass the vetting process.”

Schott tried to stammer out a question, but Lena held up her hand. “This would not remove you from the cosmonaut training program. Nor would it preclude you from going on any future missions. I’ve J’onn’s assurance on that. But we could use you, Schott. We need competent people to help see things through on the ground.”

As she said this, she heard Starikov’s intake of breath, saw, out of the corner of her eye, the other woman fold her hands and bring them slowly to her chest. She didn’t return her gaze but instead focused on the indecision wrestling in Schott's expression. He must have aged a few years between now and the Hydrolab.

“Launch is in a few weeks. You can still be with your comrades, guiding them through the steps and you’ll have experience on both sides of the porthole.”

Starikov touched his cheek and nodded encouragingly, “just until you recover and begin training again.”

Schott was breathing in tight mouthfuls of air as if he were trying to give himself courage. Slowly, he glanced up at her, his eyes wet, and said, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Kara left them soon after, allowing them the privacy to go over some of the more confidential particulars of the job. Schott was soon laughing again, waxing delightedly over his meteorite collection and the wind-up bear his father had made him, which he planned to place atop his desk at his new post. They toasted Schott’s repurposed future with the open bottle of beer and Lena sipping water from a grey ceramic cup. 

A lightness buoyed Lena as she stepped into the elevator, feeling it descend rapidly to the reception area. She wondered briefly if this was anything like what it felt to be in zero gravity. But the lightness continued, even as she left the building, even as the cold air hit her and she stepped into the dim autumn sunlight. 

Starikov was waiting for her outside.

She was pacing back and forth, stopping occasionally to bounce on her feet as she quietly hummed a song to herself.

Lena recognized the melody.

 _The dark is filled with dreams_  
_So many dreams..._  
_Which dream of all the dreams_  
_When there's a dream for every star_  
_And there are oh so many stars_  
_So many stars..._

Lena walked up to her and lightly touched her shoulder, flinching as the cadet whipped around, her expression pale and startled.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Lena said. 

Starikov let out a breath of air and laughed, her hand pressed to her chest. For a long moment, neither woman said a word. They both stood there chuckling nervously, but at what? Neither could say. 

“Do you need a ride back to the training facility?" Lena said, "I'm going elsewhere, but I can—”

Before she could answer, the cadet stepped up to her, the indecision wiped from her face. She reached out and pulled the taller woman into an embrace. Lena stiffened at first but feeling the girl’s ardor felt her body relax involuntarily as her hands dropped against Starikov’s back. As demonstrative as Soviet women were allowed to be with their affections, this embrace was not what could be called sisterly, but the pull and the warmth of that other body quickly overrode any self-consciousness. 

_It’s a bloody hospital_ , Lena thought _. No one will think a thing_. Ever so gently, she let herself sink further into Starikov's softness, sensing at the same time a strength, an agelessness she hadn't grasped before. 

“You know, you've saved him,” Starikov said.

Lena felt her voice catch as she replied.

“I think the saving was all you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anachronism Time: Work on the Argon onboard computer began in 1964 and was intended for use in a lunar module. The Brazil 66 song wasn’t released until 1968, but it helped me write most of this chapter, so it gets a cameo.


	15. White Bear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of a long update. More coming very soon.

 

It began as a low rumble, rippling across the desert floor while above waves of heat softened the vast, rocky expanse. Lena watched as the arms holding the test rocket in place fell away, dropping like petals as it lifted itself into the cast-iron sky.

She was exhausted, her mind still foggy from the previous day when J’onn had summoned her at daybreak with a terse message. She’d spent the rest of it on a flight to Tashkent and then an even more unforgiving car ride through the desert, which had nearly cost her her stomach. All the while her mind had volleyed between reasons for the summons and that sudden, sweet embrace in front of the hospital.

It had startled her. Of course, something like that would. But it wasn’t so much the strength with which the girl had clung to her as the way it had felt inside. And when Lena had pulled away, flustered and faintly embarrassed, she saw a flicker of comprehension on Kara’s features, an acknowledgment that something between them had shifted. Lena had answered that look by turning abruptly and hailing her driver. They’d driven in silence the short way to Starikov’s quarters in Star City. Her stomach knotted when she remembered how the girl had looked at her, hopeful and uncertain and perhaps a little afraid--as if she detected Lena’s discomfort and was trying to force things back to normal.

“I’ll see you?” she said and Lena had reached over and pressed her hand.

“Of course. Of course. I’ll come round tomorrow.”

Now that would be taken as a lie, a confirmation of Lena’s reluctance, and she knew, she absolutely knew that this should have been the least of her worries. But it stuck, weighed on her heart the way forbidden thoughts always pushed themselves to the front like a foreman's wife in a bread line.

 _You’re my white bear, Kara Starikov_ , she thought.

As for J’onn, she'd expected another insurmountable problem, one more delay for which they both would have to answer to the Kremlin. She saw their names and photos forever blacked out from the archives, but instead, when the dust-caked sedan pulled up in front of the Tyuratam reception center, the Chief Designer greeted her so expansively, she wondered if he wasn't another heat mirage.

 “I wanted you to see for yourself,” he said, taking her arm and leading her into the merciful warmth of a meeting room. Despite the company of the sun, the temperatures dropped in the evenings and the desert winds could be rough and bitterly cold.  

“Our first two tests have been successful,” he’d grinned, taking her reticence for dumbstruck relief. “Tomorrow’s the last.”

Now, standing on the observation platform, Lena watched behind a borrowed pair of aviator glasses as the Zvezda’s last test rocket lifted higher into the steel grey sky. She had seen a few of these launches before. The Sputnik-3, Gagarin and later, Tereshkova on the Vostok-6, and they were always magnificent, but her anxiety over the payload and the continued silence from her foreign contacts filled her with a  dread that eclipsed any sense of accomplishment.

Olsen had made no further move to contact her, and his continued silence only made her think that it had been nothing more than a sexual advance. One not necessarily unwelcome, although he seemed far too much like a man she could easily break. Since Jack, her affairs had all been gratefully brief expenditures of energy and frustration, without so much as a whiff of the future, and Lena had realized over time that that was exactly how she wanted things to be. Men always needed so much, and yet they got all the credit for being independent. And in the end, wasn’t it was better to retire to one’s room alone? You had books and cognac and Monica crooning to Bill Evans?

_Then one day all too soon_  
_She'll grow up and she'll leave her doll  
And her prince and her silly old bear _

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What a choice, she thought: a prince, a bear, or nothing at all.

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She took a deep breath, ignoring the acrid smell of dust and kerosene. The rocket, now in its pitch maneuver, had blurred into a small trail of orange flame. In less than two minutes, the booster rockets would dislodge and be tossed some 3oo miles distant from the launch site.  Kara and the others would feel it then, their weight more than doubling, the pressure pushing down on their chests, tugging back their eyelids, the skin on their faces. Lena felt again the weight at her own center, the force of the girl’s arms as she held her outside the hospital. In just a few more days, the cadets would be transferred here. In a few more days, Lena and J’onn and the rest of the Kosmicheskaya Programma would watch as those four brave people were shot into the void.

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She felt a hand clasp her shoulder and spoke before he could. “I simply adapted _your_ work, J’onn.” 

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_I should at least be happy about this,_ she thought. _I should._ She turned to him, almost lifting her sunglasses to apologize, but J'onn wasn’t looking at her; his eyes were still fixed on the distant trail in the sky.

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“I did not even see it,” he said, shaking his head in appreciation. “I was so caught up in my failures on the lunar project that I didn’t see how we might adapt what gains we were making to the Zvezda." He pulled his hand away and Lena saw his fingers tremble as he closed his fist to steady them. “It’s important to have someone who can see things from outside.” He smiled at her then. “Like me, you're an outsider, Lena. And I have never been so assured of your value as such.”

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She nodded, feeling her throat close, watching as the dust clouds stirred up in the wake of the launch rolled out across the desert, obscuring the distant radio towers and fence lines.  “Has a replacement for Schott been appointed yet?” 

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 “There won’t be one,” J’onn said.

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Lena dropped her gaze. She reached up slowly and swept her hand over the back of her neck, finding the spiny head of a milk thistle caught in her braid. _Always something waiting to sting you_. “You mean we’ve gone through all that when there was no need?”

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J’onn placed both hands against the railing and leaned into it carefully as if testing the plausibility of what he was going to say.  “There _was_ a need, Comrade. You’ve carried off an immense achievement. Not just for the product but we’ll be able to increase the payload for future missions—”

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“Does Starikov know?”

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She realized as it slipped out that she should have included Monelev and Borodin. J’onn’s mouth quirked quizzically as if noting the omission.

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“All three have been informed. Of course. And they’ve already trained for the loss of a crew member. This shouldn’t be much different.”

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Lena’s mind was racing. For what reason then? She could not think of any other than that the project was shrouded in even more secrecy than she’d thought, and that the three crew members were more isolated from the rest of the cosmonaut corps. Perhaps even more expendable. 

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#

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“You look absolutely ragged, Alesha. Come sit.”

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Natalia Olishova swatted the worn, inviting chair near the stove, next to which was a neat stack of freshly cut firewood. Natalia’s husband Sergei never settled for wood scrap from the Balashova lumber mill. Since moving into the village proper a decade previous, he’d made it a point to harvest the firewood from the forest, maintaining, however tenuously, a sense of the life they’d shared before. Alex breathed deeply, enjoying the scent of pine, of freshness that always suffused the elderly woman's apartment. 

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Before the rural council had forced them into town, Natalia and Sergei, along with their four children, were living in a cabin on the taiga, enjoying the luxury of minding their own business in a system that deemed it a crime. But their three-room apartment still felt like a gasp of freedom despite its drab, brutalist exterior. Natalia maintained her view of the trees and Lake Shipka through her daughter’s watercolors, and a shelf, prominently lined with once-banned literature, from Pasternak to Mandelstam, took center place at the back wall. Autonomy was hard to shake in a woman who had worked as a lumberjack and then a furrier and had done so while raising children in one of the most unforgiving wildernesses on earth.

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But the cancer was now steadily chipping away at her independence. It had started in the lungs, and the combination of Olishova's stubbornness with rural medical care's leaning heavily on the preventative, kept her from seeking treatment until it was far too late.  

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Alex had tried everything, done everything, even offering to personally escort the old woman to Novosibirsk for treatment, but Natalia had refused. It would not be right, she explained, for her or Sergei to spend their last months together in an unfamiliar city, so far from where they had shared so much.

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Her condition had worsened on Alex’s last visit, the pain cutting away chunks of sleep, dulling her usually sharp mind. As soon as she’d been able to, Alex made good on a promise to wrangle some much sought after pain medication from a pharmacist in Leningrad. Today, she’d hurried over to deliver it only to find Natalia sitting upright and seemingly free of pain in the warm front room.

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“You look wonderful, Natka,” Alex said. She bit her lip at the woman’s scowl. Natalia Olishova hated being patronized, but Alex found it hard to suppress the shock that had crept into her voice. She’d seen plenty of these rallies in terminal patients, dramatic ones even, but never so close to the end.

__

The old woman waved dismissively at the radio, now crackling with the latest speech from the politburo. “Switch that off, will you? No need for the corn harvest to spoil our visit. Corn...” she said, shaking her head, "disgusting. Like something from another planet."

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She even smelled better, Alex thought as they kissed each other in greeting, and her skin was softer and tinged with a healthy color.

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 “It’s Sergei’s cooking,” Natalia said. “Who knew or I would have started to die much earlier.”

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Alex laughed and pulled the sachets of medicine from her pocket. “Well, sleep at least,” she said, “one with water, every four hours, but no more than that or you'll get loopy.”

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Natalia started to protest at the generous allotment, but Alex cut her off. “It’s not a worry. I’ve plenty more at the clinic. I wanted to make sure you had enough.”

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Natalia Olishova nodded in understanding. There would be a time not far in the future when the pain would be too much. Alex had added more for such a circumstance. 

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“It will help you sleep,” Alex said, shifting back into a veneer of normalcy, “but you look so well-rested.”

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“Oh yes, yes. I’ve been sleeping and walking, and…” she gestured to the pile of yarn coiling over the arm of her recliner, “far too much of this to know what to do with. Would Jami like a hat, do you think?”

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 “I’m sure she would,” Alex said, “but would she be able to keep it for a day without it getting lost up a tree—of that I can't promise.”

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“And is she still seeing those forest sprites?" The old woman's voice was light as if she was merely riffing off of Alex's joke, but there was a genuine curiousity in her expression. 

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Alex kept the smile frozen on her face as her mind flashed back to the dead American, to that strange machine that had murdered him with ease. She screwed her face into an expression of exasperated resignation. “Among other things.”

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Natalia Olishova stopped laughing abruptly and Alex found herself with nothing to say. The old woman's mouth was drawn down as if she was weighing her next sentence. “I would have thought _you_ would believe her, Alesha.”

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It was a gentle reprove, but also an invitation. Alex felt that tight smile drifting from her face as Natalia Olishova bent forward and looked into her eyes. It was strange how quickly things reversed themselves. Alex now felt like she was the one being diagnosed.

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“Natka,” Alex ventured, unable to stop herself. This was that same foolhardly instinct that had pushed her to chase the American through the woods. “I found a Nansi totem in the forest, near the Orlov caves. I'm sure it was recent, but the Nansi resettled long before the war--”

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“They were resettled,” Natalia corrected her, “those who didn’t escape.”

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Alex nodded, feeling a rush of admiration for the woman. Although Natalia knew to hold her tongue with the right people, she also, despite the continual onslaught of half-truths and propaganda, kept the facts firmly intact.

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“They’ve stayed out of sight for so long,” Alex said, “why would they return?”

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The old woman reached over and put the medicine on the side table, then she took Alex’s hand. “I think you have a piece of that answer yourself, Alesha. Your girl tells me you’ve both seen things.”

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Alex would have balked, would have sputtered out something about Jami being an excellent fibber, which she was to those she disliked, but Natalia Olishova was not one of those people.

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“I am dying, Alesha. I’ve nothing left to be afraid of. You, however, must be cautious with what I am about to say.”

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Alex stared at her, almost afraid to breathe and break the long silence between them. Finally, she said, “you know something?” she gestured up to one of the watercolors: Lake Shipka shimmering under the night sky, framed by a silhouette of trees that now seemed to be hiding something dark and unfathomable. 

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The old woman released Alex’s hands and settled back into her chair. “As to what is happening, I know nothing. I can only say what I remember. I was a barely a teen then, terrified and I have rarely spoken of it since.”

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“Natka,” Alex said, “is this why? Is this why the Nansi were uprooted after the Revolution?"

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"It wasn't after the Revolution," Natalia said. "That was a carefully propagated revision. It happened in shortly before. In 1908, to be exact. Summer."

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Alex had heard and witnessed many strange things and had always approached them scientifically. It was the one way she could fight back against the cloud of irrationality and suspicion that had torn up her life and those of nearly everyone she loved. But despite the measure of control it had given her, she was now experiencing the sensation she'd often had after swimming too far and finding herself panicked and kicking furiously over a drop-off. 

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“The Tunguska explosion...” Alex said, her head swimming, “but Natka, that was thousands of miles away. Even if—”

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“Tunguska was an accident,” Natalia said, “a tragedy brought about by desperation, but fortunately for _them_ , it wasn’t the only attempt.”

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tereshkova went up in 1963, but I've moved her back a little closer to Gagarin's launch. Also, Monica's Waltz for Debby was released in 1964, but playlists must be played.


	16. A Life Redacted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dedicating this chapter to Tom, the best feline writing companion ever to pad cynically over my keyboard. Love you, little dude. 
> 
> Major trigger warning in the endnotes.

_The god calls out._ __  
_Blinding-bright, his tongue lashes the sky._  
_His roar booms off the hills, the heavens ring with it._  
_Ogdy is calling his avatar from the Lower World._  
_The earth at my feet tears open at the touch of his fiery tongue._  
_The god calls out._

_Heeding the god’s call, the avatar arises._ __  
_Night-walker, Spawn of Darkness, Beast of Evil Heart,_  
_From the Lower World, he arises._  
_Insatiable, All-devouring,_   
_As wild dogs tearing at entrails of their kill,_  
_Heeding the god’s call, the avatar arises._

Shaman Vasiliy Dzhenkoul

Moscow, October 27th, 1963

Maggie locked the door to the archive reading room. Not that she expected company, but having spent the last three days digging through stacks of useless files, she needed quiet and the privacy to nod off.

It was pure hunch and even a little desperate to sniff around about place so remote, and the archives didn’t offer much promise. Beria’s attempt to erase the purges in 1940 had become the habit of all state agencies, who regularly culled their records for the unsavory, and placed Lenin’s decree to preserve state information on the same level with jaywalking laws.

What she found was an ancient box containing two cracked, leather-bound files bearing the Imperial seal of Tsar Nicholas II, along with a wooden cigar box that, she noted with a snort, someone had nailed shut.

_Congratulations, Sawyer. You’ve just uncovered a royal dalliance 50 years too late._

She took out the files and placed them in front of her on the scratched wooden table. Then she took a Belomorkanal from her pack and lit up, taking a long drag as that first rush of tobacco went to her head. Maggie didn’t smoke often, but at times like this, the drug offered a welcome burst of alertness and relief. The lightbulb in the reading room flickered and she switched on her flashlight, placing it flat across the table so that the beam of light spread over the files in front of her. Then, taking a knife from her boot, she cut the leather strap on the file whose clasp had long since rusted into place.

 _What am I doing?_ she thought. _As if this--_

From inside fell the fragments of a flower, and she blinked as the sudden fragrance wafted up to compete with the cloud of smoke now curling from her lips. Roses. The petals had retained a large portion of their color. She marveled at the silkiness as she took one between her fingers. Could it still retain some of its moisture?

That first file was a list of names, dated July 1908, most of them written in Cyrillic and a Finno-Ugric variation. Below that, the names of two Russian Orthodox priests and the word “lost”—a euphemism for execution. As embroiled as he was with railroad strikes and Menshevik uprisings, it seemed strange that Nicholas II would have gone out of his way to murder a few nomads, and ones so far away from the unrest.

She took another drag of her cigarette and wondered if the flower hadn’t been some bureaucrat’s attempt to make peace with what he had done. She knew of similar rituals enacted by fellow operatives, whispered toasts to the unjustly executed, anonymous apologies in envelopes stuffed with rubles, slipped under the doors of widowed spouses or bereft family members. Had it always been that way? Was there not a single person in this country who wasn’t somehow atoning for a monstrous crime?

Maggie closed her eyes, feeling the exhaustion creep over her as a memory grasped for her in the dim light: the fate of another prisoner she’d learned of long ago, the knowledge of which had hemmed her life into this lonely corner.

_Moscow, November 1953._

Newly graduated from the Dzerzhinsky Higher Intelligence School, Maggie had been spared from the worst of it. Both of her parents had died in the war. But her father, in addition to being an NKVD officer, had left behind an exemplary record and no signs of having disowned his daughter. To Major Gessen, Maggie’s pedigree, not to mention her wartime heroics, made her a shoe-in for admission to the Institute of International Relations from which the NKVD drew the cream of its recruits. And despite feeling like a hayseed adrift amid her more urbane classmates, she had excelled, learning to use alienation as an advantage. Oscar had been _so_ wrong about her. That difference, that secret ‘flaw’ he claimed made her untrustworthy was the very thing that allowed her to see into others, to spot what they hid and who they _really_ were.

Who _she_ really was.

During those first weeks of service, when Stalin’s death had gone from denial, to rumor, to clumsy ceremonies and hastily composed speeches, Maggie took her orders and stayed quiet. But all around her, the whispers in the Lyubyanka grew shriller and more desperate. Beria was frightened and maneuvering for power. He had ordered that all the guards and the workers at the General Secretary’s Kuntsevo dacha be shot and their bodies hastily buried in the woods. And then there were the prisoners, whole cell blocks released at once while others were rushed to the gallows or the wall.

Maggie shuddered at the thought of having to carry out an execution. Her kill count had been high during the war, but that was different. Not knowing—as many of her vodka-soaked comrades confessed— if you were right to pull that trigger would twist a person, make them unrecognizable even to themselves.

So, she’d come across the file by accident, amid the chaos of another ‘reorganization.’ She couldn’t remember why she plucked it from the burning pile, much less why she chose to open it. It might have been the sun in the courtyard, the sudden intake of fresh air mingled with wood smoke, but as the others around her hurried back and forth from archive to bonfire, Maggie stopped and briefly allowed her mind to wander, her hands idly flipping through the pages as her eyes came to rest upon a name. 

_Iosif Jeremiah Danvers_

She remembered a brief stab of fear, remembered checking herself as she glanced about; then looking on with a feigned absentmindedness as the other operatives tossed file upon file into the flames, she snapped it shut and shoved it inside her coat.

 _How_ it would hurt.

But Alex had endured so much already, that emptiness of not knowing. If Maggie could find her. If she could bring her those answers…

It was Alex who found her first, but by then, it was too late.

_Moscow, March 1954_

In the chaos following Beria’s execution, the letter had arrived devoid of tampering, no suspect creases along the lip of the envelope, no comical black lines redacting information. Maggie had seen and enjoyed the black market Garbo film _Ninotchka_ in which the beautiful Comrade Yakushova received a love letter erased of all but the address and her lover’s signature. But here, the script went for pages beyond the two words that began it.

_Dearest Masha,_

Maggie’s knees buckled. She reached out to the wall for support as the past reared up at her with the finality of cracked pavement. 

Alex was no longer married. That boy she had hurried off to wed after the war had died soon after, leaving her childless. She didn't go into detail but simply went on to say that she had resigned from her position at a hospital and was working as a research biologist in Leningrad. 

_I guess the war drove the doctor right out of me_.

_Every day I think of you, Masha…Maggie. Every day. Sometimes, when I’m walking along the Nevsky, I’ll see your face or get a whiff of your cologne from some passing stranger and I’ll just stop, right there on the promenade while the people coming from the opposite direction push past me, angry and grumbling. I’m like that little man in the Dostoyevsky novella, refusing to step aside._

_But I’m not angry or defiant, just a lone, haunted woman among a sea of people all trying to shove their way into the future._

_And Maggie, I can’t see one._

_Not without you.  
_

Had the letter come just a few months prior, Maggie might have had cause for hope; she might have hurried to a quiet room to compose a reply, an apology-- a confession that she, too, hadn't forgotten.

But even as she scanned those first pages, the cold fact of it confronted her; there was no forgetting, but no hope either.

With every line came more proximate memories of the futures that Maggie had stolen. She felt the muscles in her hand tighten, saw her arm outstretched, her _Makorova_ pressed into the back of a man’s skull. She heard the square echo of a gunshot, her ears singing in protest as the man slumped forward against the brick.

 _You fought at least_. _You fought._

Sometimes she told herself that. And sometimes, it even worked. She remembered that morning, the sun high and unforgiving on the backs of the men who kneeled in front of her. They were facing the wall, alternately cursing, some whispering prayers or begging for a reprieve. Maggie had backed away from Captain Mostovskoy, her hands held high. “They haven’t even been taken for questioning,” she said, “the confessions are forged.” She holstered her pistol and Captain Mostovskoy laughed, his voice loud and sharp with bitterness.

“Think any of their victims had the privilege of a trial? A fair one?” He raised his boot and gave one of the prisoners a hard kick. Maggie flinched as the man’s face smacked painfully against the brick. “This one here used to bring Beria his girls. Isn’t that right, Shevar? Isn’t that what you said? Beria liked to drive around at night? Pluck them right off the street.”

Shevar didn’t answer. He merely lowered his head until Maggie thought it would snap off his shoulders. She felt her stomach flip. Mostovskoy must have learned of her war record; he must have assumed she would make the perfect attack dog. 

But the men, the Russians, now kneeling before them weren’t like the men she’d killed at the front. They weren’t like Beria. They’d been forced into a situation where they had no other choice but to become noxious shells of their former selves. They hollowed themselves out of fear of seeing the same thing happen to their friends, their wives or their children.

“It was even better,” Mostovskoy continued, “if he could nab a nice girl, the daughter of some party member he held a grudge against. Take her away from her family during supper. Isn’t that what you said?”

“We can’t…” she lost her breath, “we can’t do this. You want to be like him? Is really this the note you want to start off with?”

Mostovskoy softened his tone as if he were lecturing a child on a delicate matter. “Beria…” he said, “Beria took my sister.”

There was a sudden silence in the courtyard as the prisoners halted to listen. In another distant part of the grounds, a goaded crow cawed over the rattle of gunfire. Mostovskoy reached up and made to straighten his hat. His eyes were wet. 

“He brought her back to us that very same evening. And do you know what she told us? She said it was nothing. Some questions about the conductor of the youth orchestra she was a member of. She even made a joke about the oboist. 'He's going to be hung for an off note,' she said. We…we were so relieved. But a few months later, you see, we got a call from the hospital. Anyusha had hidden the pregnancy. Had tried to get rid of it on her own and…”

Mostovskoy finished that sentence by plugging a bullet into the man’s skull. He lowered his gun and exhaled as if he’d just tossed back a shot of spirits, then raised his arm and fired another into the back of the man kneeling closest to the corpse. A few prisoners cried out, craning their necks to get a glimpse of their compatriot as he toppled backward, eyes open to the bright, disinterested sky.

Maggie swallowed painfully, her eyes fixed on the ground, on a few stubborn blades of grass that had managed to shove their way up through all that death. “Comrade, this is not the way forward. The General Secretary is _gone_. Beria is _gone_.”

And that was when another prisoner, his hands unbound, his trousers falling comically about his ankles made a lunge for Mostovskoy’s pistol. Maggie glanced up to see Mostovskoy shove the man to the ground, saw the others, emboldened, now rising to their feet. There was a crack of gunfire and Mostovskoy yelped and reached for his ankle, his other hand still struggling for the stolen gun.

“I took a turn at her,” the prisoner said. “Didn’t we all get a turn, eh?” He had the gun pressed to Mostovskoy’s chest and without another thought, Maggie pulled her own and fired. Mostovskoy’s eyes went wide; he bent his chin toward the front of his uniform, now spattered with brain and bone. She caught a flicker of movement behind him and lifted the Makarova again. Firing. Again. And again, until her arm trembled and her skull shook and the last crack of the pistol was enveloped in stark silence. You couldn’t hear much after shooting. You could hear nothing after shooting like that.

She saw the carnage in front of her as the memories flooded in, of bodies piled upon one another in the snow, of a man fleeing from _her_ , falling to the ground as her bullet met its mark. Those memories rushed in to surround this moment, to comfort and categorize it into something that it wasn’t. Honorable.

She sank to her knees just as Mostovskoy bounced to his feet, revealing not so much as the graze from a bullet. He smiled at her as he bent to brush the dirt from his knees. “You see?” he said, “you _see_?”

But Maggie couldn’t see anything. Only the darkness of the pit into which she had now irretrievably fallen.

_We were girls, I said. Maybe I still was. A fool. But we’re women now, free to do what we wish. Isn’t that what we fought for? Isn’t that why we continued to suffer even after the war when the promise of normalcy was warped into a vile joke?_

_It is a disservice to Dmitri, but I must write these words because I know they are true. I made a terrible mistake. And though I do not know what you have experienced in these past eight years, I know that I have never loved anyone as much I have loved you, nor have I trusted anyone as much. Maggie…Masha, I believe in you with my whole heart._

_Please, stop receding from me. We can walk into a future together, but every day you get farther away._

But Maggie couldn’t see a future when she had stolen so many, when the organization to which she was inextricably linked had snuffed out so many innocent lives, including that of a man Alex loved as much as she now claimed to love her.

_Iosif Jeremiah Danvers, Prophylactic arrest._

A euphemism that meant ‘arrest now and question later.’

_Execution by firing squad. November 1940. Chevarsk Colony._

Maggie had taken that file and mailed it minus a return address from the outskirts of the city. Alex might guess it was her, but even if she didn’t, she would realize that their future was out of the question. Then she pulled a slim flask of vodka from an inside pocket and downed it. The taste of salt mingled with the kick of the alcohol as she took Alex’s letter, and holding it far away, put her lighter to the edge of the paper and watched it burn itself into her memory.

Alex was a woman. A widow. A doctor and a scientist. One day she might even be a lover to someone else. 

But Maggie, like all the others who walked freely along these corridors, was nothing short of a monster.

_Moscow, October 1963.  
_

Cigarette ash singed her finger and Maggie shot up, cursing as she stubbed the butt out on the tabletop.

_See what happens when you don’t sleep, Sawyer? Sentimental isn’t a good look._

She bit her lip and refocused her attention on the files.

Below the list of names was a report. An ‘anti-Imperial uprising’ had occurred in the village of Shipka, now renamed Balashova. It had been led by two Orthodox priests, who it claimed were guilty of mixing Christianity with Nansi rituals as part of a ‘black magic’ plot to depose the Tsar. Maggie shook her head at the absurdity of the cover-up, but of what?

There were no mining operations in the area, no lucrative natural resources, at least not until the Soviet government expanded the timber industry after the war. And if this was a case of ethnic genocide, as previous Tsars had practiced against the Circassians and Nicholas against ethnic Germans, why had he left the rest of the Siberian peoples alone?

She took her knife and pried open the cigar box, inside of which was a stack of daguerreotypes: an expanse of trees blasted outward from the center, a scorched patch of earth, in the middle of which and undamaged by fire, was the strangest structure Maggie had ever seen. It was the kind of black that, even with the paltry quality of the image, took on depth and density the more she peered at it. Guarding it was a row of Tsarist soldiers, whose bearing evinced an unease. She shuffled through the other pictures, the charred and headless carcass of a reindeer, a soldier posing comically near what looked to be a boulder, but upon which was inscribed an alphabet that she did not recognize. The last was the structure again, its walls streamlined and smooth as onyx, and next to it stood a youth of about twenty.

One of his eyes was covered by a forelock and he was oddly handsome, with vulpine features that made him easy to recognize from later files and newspaper clippings.

Lionel Alexandrovitch Luthor.

#

“A failure,” Alex laughed a little. “You make it sound as if it was intentional.” She stood and crossed the room to the stove atop which sat a samovar.

Natalia Olishova let out a sigh, a clear signal for Alex to drop the pretense. “A failed landing, Alesha. The others did not,” she paused, “...crash.”

Alex poured two glasses of tea, spooning in a generous helping of jam for Natalia and some cream for herself in the English style of her grandfather. She stirred both glasses slowly, her eyes fixed on the swirling liquid as she digested the enormity of Natalia’s words. With everything she had seen, with the strange bursts of radiation and those men-- that weaponized object in the forest--it wasn’t difficult to believe.

She picked up both glasses and carried one over to the old woman. Natalia was watching her, her expression grave.

“I am going to die, Alesha,” she said, “and you know that I was never one to rely on fantasy or superstition. I am telling you this because you and your girl are delving into something dangerous. I have nothing to lose, but you, your girl? I hope that if I tell you, you will leave it alone. If not for your sake, then for hers."

Alex took a seat in front of her, her mind swimming. “Tell me then.”

Natalia took a sip of her tea, warming her hands around the rim of the glass. Then she lowered it to her lap and spoke. 

“I was a girl that summer. It was hundreds of miles away, but even here, we felt the shock, saw the sky light up and change color. It was like that for weeks. Hunters went out at night, brought home the pelts of wolves and foxes. But to us, the blast was not a surprise but a confirmation. In the months before, there had been other other sightings, of bright orbs hovering above the trees or tales of fairies in dark woods. It was thought of as idle talk at first, until one day a huntsman stumbled into the church during a service. His skin was burned as if he’d lain naked in a desert and my father, a doctor like yourself, was the one to tend to him. He told me the man was delusional, ranting about some Nansi legend, that is why my father and I were allowed to live. Others weren't so fortunate.

“Did you see them?” Alex asked, "the lights in the sky?"

The old woman smiled circumspectly. “I saw nothing. But some of the villagers and the local fathers had listened to that man. When he recovered, they let him take them to that place in the forest, and oh, what they found. The trees swept aside like toppled telegraph poles, the earth scorched, and a structure standing amid a clearing as if a great house had suddenly sprouted from the earth. They were afraid to enter at first. There were markings above the opening. Many of the villagers were illiterate and took the symbols as a curse, but the two fathers, along with some local Nansi tribesmen finally gathered up the courage to enter. And they found..." Natalia Olishova's brows furrowed as if she wasn't certain of the word she was about to say, "...children. Or what looked like children, all asleep inside coffins of dark glass like snow maidens fallen from the sky. The men hit the glass and tried to get the little ones to stir to no avail. They took up hammers and stones, turned their guns on the glass, but it remained unscathed and the children remained frozen in place and time. That's when one of the priests, a would-be ‘scholar’ made the mistake of dispatching a letter to the Tsar’s scientific advisor."

"Lionel Luthor," Alex said. "Bozhe moi." She knew how this would end. Things rarely ended well for those who trusted him, but Natalia merely shrugged; they both knew the weight that came with that name. "Perhaps he hadn’t believed it at first. Perhaps he considered it the ravings of some madman. The Tunguska blast must have made him reconsider. The Tsar’s men came in and wiped out half of the village, killed those Nansi they were able to capture while Lionel made off with the prize. You want to know why Sergei and I preferred the forest? You have your answer.”

Natalia Olishova reached over and grasped Alex’s hand, causing her to start and Alex felt a knot in her throat even as everything around her seemed to cough up the answers for which she’d been searching.

“Those ships,” Alex said, attempting levity, "they weren’t sprung from Tesla, were they?”

Natalia laughed exasperatedly. “ _That_ again. No, no. Had it been Tesla, Edison would have stolen the plans and had everyone flying to the moon by now.” Her smile fell. “But you see, Alesha. That would-be scholar, the one who got himself and all those others killed? He'd been able to translate the markings. The language had been designed to be easily deciphered."

“Did he tell anyone what was written?” Alex felt something shifting as the memories from her childhood floated up from her subconscious. Of Astra Imzeyevna and that key she’d bequeathed her in Trenevosk. Of Kara. 

“It was a plea,” Natalia said, “for those who found the craft to protect its cargo. Protect. And a warning to leave it undisturbed.”

“So whoever sent it,” Alex said, “had a plan to return.”

Natalia nodded, "and one to deliver consequences if their request was not met."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a killer with regard to both structure and emotion. I had a very hard decision to make with Maggie, but given her position and the historical circumstances, I felt that there was no way she could escape morally unscathed. That said, I promise that she will redeem herself--and not through dying--but I absolutely understand if you object to the reveal. Trigger warnings for execution scenes and references to rape (not Maggie or another known character). Lavrentiy Beria was a scumbag.


	17. Sand and Frost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mon-El serenades Supercorp, but be not afraid. His musical stylings do not have the intended effect.

_Tyuratam Launch Facility. October 31 st, 1963 _

 

The pre-launch banquet was held in a boxy mess hall located adjacent to the towering vehicle assembly building. Like the rest of the facility, its interiors were comprised of the same flat grays and browns of the surrounding wilderness, with only bright red banners and blocky portraits of even blockier men to break the monotony. There were plans in place to build a luxury hotel, a place for cosmonauts and prominent party officials to rest, but these were early days, and the contrast between rustic survivalism and the most advanced technology in the world suited the image of Soviet toughness and ingenuity. 

For now, Tyuratam, erroneously named Baikonur, was a desolate space of brittle sand and fuel exhaust, where even the Chief Designer’s quarters consisted of a two-room shack with running water. Being one of the few female senior engineers, Lena had the rare luxury of a cabin with a private bath, not that it helped much. On bad days, the sand ground itself into clothes and hair; it caked itself in the nostrils and the corners of her lips until she was sorely tempted to start spitting with her male colleagues.

On this night, however, the technicians and crew were bathed and well dressed, allowing themselves to indulge in “in earthly pleasures,” as Monelev put it. One last hurrah before they all embarked on that last, most challenging stretch of the journey.  

Monelev, having commandeered a bottle of Beluga Noble and champagne, was making good on that plan. And Lena noted with no lack of amusement that Kara was sitting as far away from him as possible. Instead, it was Ilsa Borodin who saw to him, and not without tenderness. Lena smiled as she saw Borodin smack the cadet’s hand, snatching away his vodka glass when J’onn rose to make a speech.

Monelev released a loud belch and J’onn had to tap his spoon even louder as the room broke into laughter. He waited calmly until the guests drifted back into a comfortable silence.

“Comrades,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at Monelev, “as you know, I’m not one for words unless I’m bawling someone out. So, I’ll keep it brief, and in this very short launch window of leniency and equanimity, I’d just like to express my gratitude to you all. In four—”

 _Four days_ , Lena thought, her chest tightening as her mind stole into the future. In four days, Kara would be awakened at dawn and transported to Site I, the same place from which Gagarin had launched in the Vostok. There, she would be helped into her suit and escorted up the ladder into the nose of the craft.

She watched Kara’s expression as she took in J’onn’s words. The cadet appeared rapt on the surface, but Lena detected a measure of distance, as if the girl was planning an entirely different trajectory to the one he now laid out before them. Kara returned her gaze suddenly, and Lena smiled in clumsy acknowledgment. She felt her mouth go dry when Kara’s eyes didn’t waver, and turning away, she took another long pull from her wine glass.

 _Do not,_ Lena told herself. _This is absurd._

She kept her eyes fixed on the table setting, a bouquet of desert flowers encircled by a ribbon with a smiling portrait of Lenin. She did not raise them again until J’onn finished his speech.

Then, smiling, the Chief Designer tapped his glass again and the first appetizer was carried out in scandalously bourgeois fashion. There were tuxedoed waiters, wearing sashes and carrying silver dinner platters that they placed before each guest with theatrical aplomb. An awed and appreciative noise went through the room, that is until the waiters lifted the lids to reveal small plastic containers.

There was a dead silence as the guests looked uncertainly at the offerings in front of them. Then, without so much as a lifted eyebrow, J’onn picked up his packet, toggled a straw into position, and drank. 

“Ah,” he said, his eyes closing in pleasure, “beef stroganoff a la cosmos.”

Monelev let out an audible croak of protest, and J’onn presented him with a broad grin.  “Why there's no need to worry, Comrade,” he said, “this is merely an amuse-bouche. In solidarity with you, of course.”

Kara let out a loud, boisterous laugh and raised her own package to her lips, “in solidarity!” She met Lena’s eyes again, this time with ease, and relieved, the Engineer laughed and raised her glass as the waiters carried in platters of real food: eggplant stuffed with walnut paste, salo, and manti dumplings. It was a rare feast, laden with old comforts and local delicacies, but feeling dangerously heady after a few too many glasses of Mavrud, Lena excused herself after the first course, telling J’onn she had to recheck some calculations.

As she left the hall, she turned and walked in the direction of the vehicle assembly building, now a dark, looming shadow in the night sky. She could see the lights on in the hangars. The on-duty technicians were working late, checking and rechecking system controls, ensuring that nothing went unaccounted for. 

The wind whipped her hair in her face as she made her way along a narrow road between the buildings. She reached up and refastened the clasp in her hair, tightly enough to chance a headache, she realized, but it was difficult to see as it was. If she was caught, she could feign drunkenness, say she had merely gotten lost, but just as she reached the perimeter fence, a truck came roaring out in the opposite direction. Lena leaped aside, crouching low as the truck lurched to a stop. A guard dropped from the back of the truck as Lena backed quietly into the shadows.

“Delicately!” he said, “the orders are ‘delicately,’ you imbecile!”

The driver hopped from the cab and muttered something about a fox.

“A fox!” yelled the guard. “The exhaust fumes are getting to you, tovarisch. This is a desert. Nothing but dry grass and goat herders.”

They bickered for another moment as Lena edged away and around to the back of the truck. It was open, she saw, a square hollow of darkness concealed by a thin flap of tarpaulin.

She took a deep breath and stepped up,  pulling the sheet aside. _What I wouldn’t give for match,_ she thought. But as she stepped into the truck, she nearly gasped as her eyes fell upon the cargo: of similar size and shape to the ‘coffin’ she had seen in the Hydrolab, but not encased in anything. Instead, the thing was draped haphazardly in a blanket.

 _Like that bloody Howard Hawks movie,_ she thought, remembering those scratchy bootleg reels her father used to screen for her and Lex. Lionel had loved his monsters, but what revealed itself to her was even closer than she expected.

Something was glimmering beneath the cloth, emitting its own light. She ignored the danger signals coursing through her, her pulse thrumming heavily in her ears and took another step, reaching over to lift the edge of the blanket. It was too dark inside to know for certain, but as she bent closer, squinting deep into that dark, crystalline surface, she saw it.

_It couldn't.  
_

_They couldn't.  
_

The driver shouted something and Lena felt the truck rest slightly as he hopped back into the cab. The guard barked another order at him, his feet swiveling in the gravel as he turned back. Lena dropped the blanket and tore from the truck, her feet noiselessly hitting the gravel.  She ducked behind a power generator just as the guard hoisted himself into the back.

The guard paused, noting the swaying tarpaulin and Lena stopped breathing, her hands fisting in her skirt as he thumped the side of the truck.

"Move, will you?" he shouted. "I don't want to be here until launch day."

She stayed like that, pressed against the generator for a long moment as the truck lurched its way down the path; then she waited again, for her breath to even out, for her mind to clear. The latter wasn't going to happen. 

What she had seen. It couldn't be, but it was unmistakable now.  For silhouetted inside that hulk of shimmering darkness was something small in shape. Human. Alive. 

#

When Alex opened the door to her clinic, she was greeted by her daughter and most of Maria Ilanovna’s extended family: Maria's sister with her young son and two babushkas were huddled together on the narrow bench in the waiting room. They stood abruptly as she entered and Alex recognized the sallow, cheerless face of Victor Peplov, Maria Ilanovna’s cuckolded husband.

“They got here a few hours ago,” Jami said, hurrying up to her. “I told them they should go back, that you would meet them at their home, but they insisted.”

Alex pulled her daughter into a brief hug, appreciating the girl’s bemusement in that room full of worried faces. Peplov squeezed his hat in his hand as he approached. It was barely visible, a small slip of brown-green fabric peeking out between thumb and forefinger.

“Maria has gone into labor,” he said. “It is far too early. You must come.”

Alex took a deep breath and nodded. She was bleary, exhausted from her rounds and the shock of what Natalia Olishova had told her. She steadied her expression, but a knot of suppressed cynicism threatened to expose itself in her brows.

 _Not that early_ , she thought, remembering Max.

“Of course," she said, "why aren't more of you with her?" 

“My mother is with her,” Peplov said. “And Comrade Lord has kindly sent for his personal physician, but the man is too far away. He can’t get here until tomorrow evening.”

“I see,” Alex said, feeling her stomach curl in disgust both at Max and at Peplov’s obliviousness. “Let me get my things.” She nodded to Jami who scrambled to prepare her bag.

If she was telling Alex the truth, then Maria Ilanovna was a little further than eight months along. There was definite danger, but not the certainty of a crisis as Peplov perceived it. It was Max’s child and not her husband’s, to whose bed she had only returned in order to cover for her indiscretion. But to Peplov, foolish and grateful for his wife’s renewed affections, the labor must have seemed even more dangerously early.

When they reached the Peplov's dank, two-story house, Ilanovna’s mother Zenia rose to greet them, rattling out a string of frantic words in a dialect Alex could barely make out.

She understood enough. 

“Unconscious. Bleeding. You must help.”

She hurried to wash her hands and instructed Peplov and the old woman to prepare some clean linens and hot water. Then she opened the door and stepped into the bedroom and her face went as pale as the moon.

She had seen Maria Ilanovna only a few days ago when she had warned her in not-so-subtle terms to lay off Jami.  She hadn’t felt a single pang of guilt then, but now, as she looked at the ashen woman before her, she had to force her shock into check. Ilanovna was on her side, her breath shallow, her body glistening with sweat as she clutched at her stomach. Beneath her, the once white sheets were stained with an ochre fluid. 

 “Maria.” Alex hurried toward the bed and took the half-conscious woman by the knees, pushing her onto her back. Then she took out the fetal heart monitor Jami had devised from a stethoscope and pressed it to the woman’s abdomen. The child was still alive, strong even. 

Ilanovna grasped at Alex's shoulder. "It's too early. My husband. He can't..."

Peplov stuck his head in the door and Alex saw the look of fear on Maria Ilanovna’s face. 

She took the linens and the pot of water from him and with his help, lay a clean blanket beneath Maria Illanovna. Then Alex gently cleaned her with a mix of warm water and disinfectant before and draping another blanket over her abdomen. 

 “It’s too early,” Peplov whispered. 

Alex saw Ilanovna’s eyes flick uncertainly between Alex and her husband and returned a somber nod. "It is," she said, "but there are things that can be done. We’ll get her through it. We’ll get them both through it."

She saw Ilanovna’s head fall against the pillow in relief. That was the narrative she’d promised to uphold, and she had to admire the woman for keeping her story straight under such excruciating circumstances. She gestured to the door. “Leave us for a moment,” she said to him. "Please."

He nodded timidly and for a brief instant, Alex sympathized with Ilanovna’s desire for another man. Peplov, who’d long been known to snitch on his fellow workers down at the lumber mill, had clearly been a marriage of convenience. As the door closed behind them, Alex pressed Maria's forehead with a warm cloth. Then she placed a bit between her teeth and repositioned her legs.

“It's okay,” she said, “just worry about yourself and the child. We'll get through this."

Three and a half hours later, Alex stood, arms folded tightly as Peplov placed a healthy, sleeping boy in his mother’s arms. The change in Ilanovna over the last hour had been dramatic, the color returning to her cheeks, the stress lines once etched into her features melting softly from skin now soft with youth. Dramatic, certainly, but as Alex clasped hands and deflected the family's gratitude, she felt an odd, insistent worry at the pit of her stomach. It was the child that both amazed and frightened her. As close as she was to the due date, Alex had anticipated problems: weakness, immune deficiencies, at the very worst, respiratory difficulties. The former she still couldn't be sure of, but the child seemed hardy, abnormally so. He displayed no signs of premature birth, no milky translucence in the skin or underdeveloped crown. Instead, he bore fully developed features and his head was covered with thick dark hair. Had Ilanovna's boast of a marital strike been a lie? Was he her husband's child after all? But the sharpness, the shrewdness already evident in the boy's features told her otherwise. Either Ilanovna had been sleeping with Lord longer than she claimed or the child was... another stroke of luck? Alex's mind shifted to the recent dearth of patients at her clinic, at Natalia Olishova's fast and near-miraculous return to health. And then she remembered the plants. 

#

Lena’s hands trembled as she tossed back another shot of whiskey. She had been expecting something monstrous, a bomb, a batch of R-7 rockets equipped with nuclear warheads, but _this_. It was both nightmarish and laughably absurd. She placed the glass down and sat slumped on the edge of her bed, massaging her closed eyes as if to erase the image from her mind.

Who would do such a thing? What kind of monstrous...

She stood up and began pacing the floor again, the boards cold and creaking beneath her bare feet. There was no phone in her cottage, but there was a call box a mere twenty yards away. She could attempt to contact Olsen, but it was certain that all communications at the facility were being monitored. And what would she say in the event that she _did_ get through? It's not a bomb, by the way. Nothing to worry about. Just a human. Possibly in cryo-sleep. Might as well read the entirety of Mary Shelley over the phone.

 “It’s not a bomb,” she repeated to herself, hearing the shake in her voice. “It's not a bomb. It’s not a bomb. It’s not—”

A loud rap rattled the door and Lena's heart stopped. Someone had seen her. 

The knocking came again, gentler this time, but insistent. She crept up to the door without turning on the light. 

“Lena?” The voice was hushed but unmistakable. It was Starikov.

Lena quickly tightened the sash on her robe and opened the door. Kara grinned and with a strength that surprised her pushed past her into the cabin. 

“Kara, I—”

Without a word, the cadet shoved Lena against the door and pressed a finger to her lips, her other hand reaching around her waist to close the latch. 

 “Please,” she whispered, “he’s very, very close.”

"Who--" That’s when she heard the sound of clumsy footfall, the loud intake of breath as cadet Monelev broke into a baying rendition of _Blue Hoarfrost.  
_

_A blue train's rolling_

_Through a blue night_

_I'm following this blue bird_

_To meet you_

_You are my blue bird_

It was a blatant melodic theft of _One Way Ticket to the Blues_ \--the operative word being blue. 

_He would choose that_ , Lena thought.  

Monelev lost the trail of the song and cleared his throat. “Kara! My blue bird!” he wailed, “my little dove!”

“Which is it?” Lena snorted, and Kara let out a giggle and pressed her hand hard over the taller woman's lips.

“Do. Not. Let. Him. Find. Me,” she mouthed.

Lena nodded and they stood in perfect stillness, wincing as Monelev’s serenade did battle with the desert winds. He paused, then took a noisy step forward, grunting as he tripped over one of the broken bottles that were scattered around the cabin. 

“Kara?” he said, “how are we to make love amid the stars if we are so unpracticed here on earth?”

Lena winced, trying not to laugh as she saw Kara’s eyes bulge in mortification. She shook her head slowly and mouthed the words, “No” and “Never.”

They waited like that, their bodies pushed together, Lena’s back stiff against the door as Monelev continued to call out her name. Then, with a sudden decisiveness, they heard his boots shift in the sand. He let out an enormous belch and then proceeded to whistle as he staggered away from the cabin.  

Lena waited, not moving until they could be certain. Kara’s expression was focused, listening, her hand still poised gently over Lena's mouth. Lena suddenly became conscious of their proximity, felt her face warming to the feel of Kara’s chest rising and falling against her own.

It felt, she thought, as if they were counting down to something. 

Kara’s eyes met hers and the smile slowly drifted from her face. 

Lena inhaled, feeling her chest shift against Kara again. “I suppose you're safe now.”

“Yes,” Kara said, her voice barely audible. But still she did not move.

“Why are we whisp--” Lena’s voice stopped dead in her throat as Kara lifted her hand from the door and gently encircled Lena's waist. 

“Kara, perhaps you’ve had too much to—” She felt the girl's thumb graze her stomach and shivered.

Kara cocked her head, one half of a headshake as she reached up to stroke Lena's cheek. She dipped her hand in Lena's hair, reached back, her fingers gentle, searching until they found what they were looking for. “Were you planning to sleep like that?” Kara said, and Lena felt a tickle in her scalp as Kara slipped the clasp from her hair. 

"N-no," Lena said. She wanted to say more, to question just what was happening, but Kara let the clasp drop to the floor, and Lena found herself leaning into her, pulled in by that strange gravity, that warmth. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, their lips were millimeters apart. 

 “I hadn’t really planned to sleep,” she managed.

Kara smiled and closed the distance between them, her lips soft and tasting faintly of schnapps. Lena felt her pulse race even as her body went slack and Kara’s arms wrapped around her, supporting her as Lena pulled her closer, deepening the kiss until they were both faint and out of breath. She buried her face in that golden hair, in the scent of the steppe and somehow the stars. This was, she thought, the sweetest kind of pain.

“Kara... There’s something... I need to…”

Kara silenced her with a kiss, tugging her gently back into that small, barren room as she pulled the sash from her robe. As they reached the edge of the bed, she took Lena's hands and brought them to the buttons of her gown.

“But there is no time, Lenotchka,” she said. “There is no more time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'm sorry for the late update. It's been a roller coaster these past few weeks, personally and well...you've all been watching the news. This is part of a larger chunk with more coming in the following days. I know I always say that, but for real this time. 
> 
> Happy Late Halloween. 
> 
> Vote. 
> 
> And thank you as always for reading.


	18. Recognition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m making up for the delay by posting two days in a row. That’s what I get for fretting over the same 8,000 words. More on the way.

_Moscow. October 31 st, 1941_

 

Maggie had been gone a week.

Seven ragged days that bled together like the mud-stained snow. After weeks of shelling their way through frigid cold, the Germans had managed to reach the Mozhaisk defense line, prompting Stalin to call in reinforcements from the East. Yet despite the Soviet retreat from Volokolamsk, there were signs that the enemy was slowing down, that their strategy, reliant on a campaign of shock and quick surrender, had few if any viable contingency plans. 

“Fritz’s morale is as thin as those coats of theirs,” said a young man whose leg she had saved from amputation. Alex forced a smile as she watched him stretch his frost-blackened toes into a ‘victory’ sign. But the wounded were still piling in, fresh from the skirmishes that drew closer, and with each sign of hope came a reminder of Maggie’s absence.

Alex worked tirelessly, sleeping in two-hour shifts, her dreams rattled by the thrum of the Kharkiv bombers flying overhead. She'd taken up a small space on the upper floor of the building, a closet with a cracked window and a hole in the roof through which she could see the stars. It was just cold enough, she thought, to afford her some privacy. And there, she huddled under a thick pile of blankets and entertained the idea that she was somewhere else. In this sense, she could welcome the lack of sleep, the way it dulled her senses and kept her mind from straying back to that moment in the corridor and the feel of Maggie's lips on her skin.

 _Unrest keeps unrest away_. 

It was a disquiet she had yet to quite articulate, even if she’d begun to acknowledge it. She recognized it from the books she’d read: Natasha Rostov’s warm blush in the presence of Andrei Bolkonski; Dmitri Sanin’s infatuation with Gemma Roselli, but these were sentiments shared between men and women. How could one reconcile such feelings for a member of her own sex?

There had been _one_ exception-- a gift from Astra Imzeyevna. It was a slim, fragmented Bildungsroman about an angry tomboy who connected more with animals than human beings. Alex had sensed then that Astra had seen something of her in Vera’s moodiness and alienation, but now another memory floated up before her: a first kiss, one so revelatory it had shifted the girl’s perspective. 

Not a man. Or a boy. 

_She looks at me, and suddenly her hands wind round my neck, and her dark lips, red as wild strawberries ripened in the sun, press gently and full on my lips…suddenly a new, unexperienced feeling shuddered in my heart and mind, each drop of blood, each vein throbbing with vital life and the grasses and flowers parted like sea reeds when a boat clears a shoal and sets off._

Had Astra sensed even that in her? Had she been preparing her for some reckoning?  


_Your mind is simply failing you, Alex. You need to rest.  
_

She closed her eyes and tried to shake away her uncertainty before turning back to her patient. He was a gunner, a stout and lucky soul whose wounds were just dire enough to remove him from the front lines.

 “I know that look,” he said, “you’re thinking of someone, aren’t you?”

Alex allowed a smile to settle on her face as she tightened his bandage. “Sharp,” she replied. She poured a generous shot of medicinal vodka into a small chipped glass and passed it to him. He took it in his good hand and let it rest against his chest.

“He’s must be very lucky,” he said.

Alex stopped, confused as to how to reply, but the rustle of the curtain turned their attention toward the dead-eyed stare of a Special Departments officer. He nodded to them stiffly, and without a word, stepped inside the small enclosure.  

Alex checked a sigh but felt her nostrils flare at the intrusion, at the all-too-familiar grey of that uniform. The NKVD had become a nuisance, and a deadly one at that: barging into surgeries, demanding to examine the patients for self-inflicted wounds. Some of her colleagues spoke in hushed tones about carrying out hurried amputations on all who'd received gunshot wounds to the hands. They were destroying ‘evidence’ they said. It was the only way to rescue those boys from the firing squad.

Alex pressed a reassuring hand to the man's shoulder, then turned toward the officer. He  ignored her glare, and bent to examine her handiwork.  

 “The nerves in his shoulder are severed,” she said, “his movement will remain limited on that side.”

 “Rather lucky for him, isn’t it?” he said sharply.

Alex felt her nails burrow into her the skin of her palm. How much time were these men wasting? The executions were bad enough. How many lives had been lost as a result of these useless interrogations?

She thrust a tin cup from the bedside table in front of him as the smell of copper and iodine suffused the enclosure. Inside, rattling in a stew of blood and disinfectant, was a needle-nosed bullet. The officer took a step back, nearly knocking over the curtain stand.

 “You’ll recognize it as Spitzgeschoss,” Alex said in perfectly accented German, “and the angle of entry clearly corroborates this man’s story. Long range. A sniper. Would you like a closer look?” She inched forward in the cramped space, relishing his dismay as he stepped aside to the curtain. This was an executioner who didn’t like blood. He held up his hand and pushed away the tin.

“Very good,” he said, “I appreciate your thoroughness.” Then, straightening, he pulled back the curtain, glancing back at the gunner before he let it fall between them.

“We’ll see you’re placed where you can be of service, Comrade. The laundry perhaps.”

It was a sad attempt at an insult, a last word. But as he stalked away, the gunner leaned back in his bed and grinned.

“Think of it this way,” Alex said. “No lice--and you’ll have soap!”

“And beautiful girls who smell of soap,” he said.

“I can’t think of anything better,” Alex said, surprising herself.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Astra gave Alex is The Tragic Menagerie by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, the pre-Revolution, lesbian coming-of-age novel we never got.


	19. The Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to hit the 50,000-word mark and with this being the one year anniversary of Maggie's departure, some Sanvers is in order.

  
  


On the seventh night, Alex sliced her thumb open on a scalpel and the chief physician ordered a 12-hour leave.

“Bed, Danvers. Don’t come back until 14:00 tomorrow. And feed yourself for Lenin’s sake,” he said, finishing the dressing on her bandage. Alex trudged out of the hospital, heavy in body but even heavier in heart. She hoped, as she'd hoped every night, to find the lieutenant standing there, her cigarette alight, those dark eyes reflecting the moonlight as Alex raised her own in greeting. But as with the last six nights, there was no one, just the silence that came with a fresh drift of snow.

 Revived by the chill, she bit her lip and turned toward Moscow’s military district. Maggie’s battalion quarters were located in a derelict finishing school from the days of Tsar Alexander III, and the building, its large portico emblazoned with cherubs and gold leaf stood out amid the grimmer, utilitarian facades.

There was a carnival-like atmosphere in the district, as soldiers and civilian alike prepared for the coming parade in the square. They smoked and flirted as they arranged wreaths and touched up banners. Some soldiers lovingly polished their weapons and traded stories or bartered for tins of food.

A communications station was set up in the lobby, where a cluster of shabby, but well-fed war correspondents had set up camp; their typewriters engaged in a battle of noise with those of the soldiers relaying communiqués to the front. 

“A battle for the soul of Russia,” one of the journalists said between mouthfuls of black bread, “geese roaming through the ruins of an abandoned village! Tracer bullets soaring like crows of death through the night sky.” 

Alex saw the look of discomfort on the face of the man’s stenographer and shook her head in sympathy. He likely hadn’t been anywhere _near_ combat, not that it would matter. If his story pleased, then it would see print, thickening the fog of misinformation.

She spotted a pair of soldiers slouching on a broken down sofa that sided the staircase. The younger of the pair was squinting over a questionnaire as the older man read off each item.

 “But my parents weren’t in Kiev,” she heard him say. “They’re not even from Ukraine.”

“Better let them know that,” the older man said. “Bring your papers into Mishkov. Don’t want them mistaking you for a kulak.” 

She wasn’t sure if they were from Maggie’s battalion, but they looked gentler and more approachable than the other men who cast their eyes greedily over any woman in their proximity. She stopped in front of them, her mind groggy from the lack of sleep, and waited until they both looked up. The boy’s mouth went slack when he saw her.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “I’m wondering if you might know where I can find someone. A lieutenant. Magdalena Rodaski?”

The youth, who’d been smiling up at Alex like he couldn’t believe his luck, shot his friend a look of sweeping disappointment. The older man threw back his head and laughed.

“And you are?” he said, standing up and offering his hand.

“Alex Danvers, regiment physician **,”** she said.

“Ah,” he said. He cast the boy a meaningful glance, then leaned forward, his voice low. “The lieutenant isn’t here. If you have a message for her, I can relay it.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s on duty,” he said. “Can’t say.”

Without thinking, Alex clasped her other hand over his, pulling him down to face her. “What do you mean? Was she posted somewhere? Is she safe?”

They both realized that her voice had carried and the man yanked his hands from hers, placing it firmly on her shoulder as he turned her around. Alex, her heart pounding and her thoughts muddy, felt her voice stop in her throat.

“You look as if you need air,” he said. “Come for a walk with me.”

He slipped an arm around her waist as he walked her toward the doors.

He was limping, she noticed, looking cautiously about as his uneven gait sounded on the marble floor, inviting the stares of onlookers. He waited until they were down the front steps before speaking.

“She is well,” he said. He let go of her and stepped in front of her. His expression loaded with another meaning, possibilities Alex was too exhausted to grasp. She needed to know where. If she was safe.

She needed to see her.

“Where?” she said and he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She tried to flinch away, but he held her in place. “I can’t tell you much more. But if she means anything to you, you’ll keep quiet about what I _have_ said.”

Alex glanced up at him, saw the warmth in his grey eyes. She swallowed, remembering the hardened determination on Maggie’s face as she’d followed behind her like some lovelorn puppy. She’d thought, hoped, that Maggie had merely gone to report those coordinates to command. But Maggie, her brave, stubborn Maggie had decided to be stupid.

“She’s out there, isn’t she?” Alex said.

He paused for a long moment, searching her expression. “Yes.” He gestured to his bad leg. “She’s doing what I wish I could be. What that invertebrate of a battalion commander is too afraid of doing.” Seeing the anxiety rise in her face, he softened his tone. “You’re the English girl then?”

She nodded, trying to steady her breath. “Quarter.”

He pulled a cigarette case from his pocket and offered her one. She refused, feeling numb as if she were watching herself from a rooftop. Her father and Kara were gone, with Eliza now god-knows-where. And now Maggie was away somewhere. Maybe injured. Maybe lost to her forever.

Why did this hurt _so much_ _more_?

“Ah, well that’s what she calls you,” he said, lighting up. He took a long drag.  “Have faith in her, little one. Masha is as cunning as she is brave.”

 _Masha_ , Alex thought. She would have liked to have called her by that name.

Later, she dreamed of Astra’s book, of the sun-warmed fields and the sound of the wind as it rushed through her fingers and tickled beneath the folds of her soft cotton blouse. She was standing on a broad wooden porch that looked out over a valley, the shadow of a raincloud looming over the river below. She did not know why she was there, but she knew she was at home. At peace. As she breathed in slowly and took in the sight, she heard footsteps behind her.

 “You’re still sleeping.” It was Maggie’s voice, low and playful. She felt her rest her chin on her shoulder, her warm arms encircling her waist and smiled.

“How could I be?” Alex said. She reached down and traced a finger up the smaller woman’s wrist. “Asleep, I mean. You’re here. And this—it’s just so…”

But Maggie was no longer holding her. Instead, her hands were on her shoulders. She was shaking her roughly and Alex felt her ribs knock in her chest.

She shot up, her nostrils assaulted by the smell of tobacco and boiled cabbage. It was Maggie clinging to her, but her bunkmate Luda. She’d practically pulled Alex from the bed.

“Come on, you layabout!”

Alex flinched as Luda’s spittle hit her cheek. She reached up and wiped it from her face.

“I’m on leave.”

“Not anymore, princess.” Luda gave her an exasperated look. “They broke them out. Hundreds are making their way in from the German encirclement. They need us.”

There were so many. Men and women, on stretchers lined up across the triage zone like bloodstained tiles. Others milled about, shivering and bleeding through makeshift bandages. Alex tried to stay focused as she walked among the frozen wounded, kneeling to check vital signs, to direct the direr cases into immediate surgery. But as she moved, methodical and cautious, she found her mind wandering, her eyes scanning the crowd for a flash of those dark eyes, that expression that evinced humor with hardness and a kind of light Alex had only dreamed about.

Was she _here_?

Had she made it out?

 _Breathe, Alex_ , she thought. _This is not the thing you can control._

“Danvers!”

It was the chief physician. He waved her over and Alex half stumbled as she weaved her way along the waiting patients.

“You can work triage later. We need you in surgery,” he said. He tossed his hand in the direction of the corridor and Alex nodded. Without a word, she made her way to the supply room.

In any other situation, she would feel proud. She had taken part in surgeries as an assistant, but not having completed her medical degree, the chief physician’s order was an expression of confidence. Even so, her heart took no pride in the command but sank as she tore her eyes from the scene and hurried down the dark, flickering corridor. She scrubbed her hands, dipping her face into the cold water and relishing the shock to her nerves. As she pulled on her smock, she saw that her kit was open and hurriedly checked through the contents.

_Bloody morphine thieves._

The vials were still there, but the small flask of spirits she’d been keeping for herself was gone. She closed her eyes in relief, happy that she wouldn’t have to explain the missing drugs, but then something stirred behind her.

“Alex.” 

The voice was faint but unmistakable and she turned, almost afraid she would find nothing. A ghost. But Maggie was there, leaning heavily into an oak wardrobe that had obscured her in shadow, her body supported by a crutch. In her pocket, Alex saw the flask and smiled. How many times had she planned to offer it to her, to take her away somewhere where they might drink in private. 

Maggie smiled at her weakly. “I was waiting for you.”

Alex clasped a hand to her mouth and hurried forward. "This isn’t real," she said.

“It is," Maggie said, and then nodded at the crutch, “At least to the guy I stole this from. He was sleeping and I’ll return it, but I had to get out of there. They wanted to put me in a bed. Can you believe that?”

She could hear the faint hint of Maggie’s Georgian accent. She'd long known that she was from somewhere in the Caucasus, but Maggie had been reticent on the specifics, keeping her guard up and speaking in perfect Russian. Alex never knew if it was to avoid the association with Stalin or out of some strange sense of solidarity. She didn’t care. She couldn’t.

She saw Maggie’s body trembling,  glanced down at the blood-soaked bandage revealed by the large tear in her trousers. “Well, of course, I can believe it,” she said. “C’mere.” 

Tears stung her eyes as she reached out, slipping her arms around Maggie’s waist. The lieutenant sank into her and the crutch dropped to the floor with a loud clatter. Alex's breath hitched as Maggie’s knees buckled beneath her. Gently, she hoisted the smaller woman’s body in her arms, then carried her to a cot by the door.

As they settled, Maggie’s head sank into her shoulder and Alex pressed a hand to her forehead. Her skin was hot to the touch. “We’ve got to get you to a bed,” she said. 

Maggie nodded but didn’t move. Instead, she buried her face in Alex’s neck, her warm breath tickling her skin. “I just wanted to see you. And talk to you.”

She smelled of forest and firewood, Alex thought. She pressed her cheek into Maggie’s hair, tracing a hand over that soft olive skin. "And I'm happy," she said, "Enormously so, but you need to rest."

Maggie reached up and covered Alex’s hand with her own and she realized that her own body was trembling just as wildly. She felt Maggie's lips against her skin, curling into a smile as she entwined their fingers.

“I’m supposed to be the cold one, Danvers.”

She pulled back, her smile fading now, her voice a whisper as she reached up to trace her fingers over Alex's cheeks, her lips. 

“You’re hurt,” Alex said, her voice lowering. “And you’re feverish. We’ve got to…”

“I know,” Maggie said, even as she leaned in closer, even as Alex felt herself dipping her head to meet the softness of the other woman’s lips. Alex felt her whole body shudder at the contact, at the weight of Maggie’s body as she clung to her. 

Maggie kissed her again and again, her breath warm and sweet with Alex's spirits. "Alesha," she said, "I thought of you every day out there. You kept me alive. Made it worth it."

"I thought about you. All the time," Alex said, hearing her voice break. "Cut my bloody thumb open thinking of you. And I've so wanted to do this."

She leaned into her, their noses touching. Maggie went to kiss her again, but Alex gathered her strength and pulled back.

“And I…” she whispered, feeling the tug of the heat rising between them, “I don't want to stop, but we've got to get you seen to.”

Maggie shifted closer, pulled her in again. “One more and I'll go willingly," and Alex closed her eyes, her heart thrumming with a mix of worry and elation. 

“One more then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: More on Kara's origin. Thanks for reading!


	20. Subject Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peek into Kara's backstory. More to come.

Estonia 1937  
   
Spied from a distance, he appeared to be a kind and patient father. He walked slowly to accommodate the pace of the young girl holding his hand, and would halt every few minutes to peer at her attentively. But to her, the Doctor’s skin was rough, and his fingers were painfully tight around the small bones of her hand. And then there was his voice. He said nothing cruel or untoward. But it was the way he spoke, how he couched everything in condescending simplicity and a clear air of menace. 

  
“I have complete confidence in you, Six," he'd say. "Now do as I ask and there will be a treat for you later.”

  
Six wasn’t the first. She’d heard the others whispering. About being taken from their beds at night, escorted into the elevator and down into that dark room in the deepest part of the facility.

  
“Concentrate,” the others would say, mimicking the Doctor's baritone, “open yourself to it. Let its consciousness become your own.”

What it was, they never said, an omission conditioned in the same way they never uttered their names in front of their captors.  
But the names they remembered. Even though most of them had been infants when they’d been revived. In those rare moments of privacy, in the woods or on the courtyard, they would even call one another by them. Yulia. Silga. Faora. Non.

Kara.

  
Like Non, Kara could remember more than just names. But only a little. She had glimpses of her parents—they must have been her parents—shrouded in dreams of fire and fear. Non boasted of remembering much more, but would only trickle out a place name, a custom or a word—much of it lies, Kara suspected—to keep the younger children in his thrall.

  
When Doctor Luthor summoned her one night, Kara had expected to be tortured, to be thrown into a chamber with some vile, subterranean creature with horns or a venomous tail, or perhaps one of the madmen locked on the floor below their sleeping cells, men who would pound up at the floors and keep them awake.

But what Kara discovered was neither monster nor man. 

It was a child, swaddled in dark robes and encased in a coffin of blue-black glass that shimmered as Kara moved around it. Was it dead? Asleep? She could not tell; it looked frozen in time, and Kara felt as she peered through the glass that she was staring across a void.

Luthor placed a hand on her shoulder and bent to her ear. “Subject Six, meet Subject Seven. Familiarize yourself. You’ll be spending a lot of time together.” Kara cringed, less at the words than at the smell of tobacco and garlic mingling on his breath. “We've tried for years, Six, years. And with your help, we’ll manage it. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you like another baby cousin?”

Cousins? Was that what they were, those children with whom she lived? Non certainly didn't feel like family. Nor did the others. Not really.

Just that morning, one of the good mornings, when they were allowed under heavy guard to go berry picking around the lake, Yulia had cried like a baby when she'd scratched herself on a bramble. Non had behaved even more abominably. 

“Oh come now!” the boy spat. He stormed up to Yulia and pulled her finger from her mouth, thrusted her hand toward the others. “Faking. Always faking.”

  
Yulia pulled it away. “I’m not.” Yet she went to cover it and Non grinned, taking it back again, spreading her fingers to reveal a thin ribbon of blood, the cut no longer there to sustain its flow.

“Cry like that and you’ll only draw more attention,” he said.

  
“Stop it,” Kara whispered, she stepped forward and pulled Yulia away from him, placing a protective arm around the girl. “You’re ruining the day. For everyone.”

  
"How?" Non shrugged, his bottom lip pushed out as he looked up at the overcast sky. “You know they’re afraid of us.”

"This isn't the place, Non," Kara said. "You’re putting all of us in danger.”

  
But Faora and Silga crept up to Non, eager to hear more. He put his arms around their shoulders and gave them a squeeze.  
   
“Let me give you a demonstration,” Non said. He gestured toward a row of stones on the edge of the water. “Choose one of those for me, Silga,” he said. “Any one of them. Let’s play a game now, shall we?”

  
Silga looked at him uncertainly, then hopped over to a bed of stones edging the water. She looked them over for a second and then pointed down at a sharp chunk of grey stone. Non stared at it a moment, his eyes narrowing, and then he said, "you'll find a coin underneath, and a bit of a broken bottle.” He gave Yulia a pointed look. “Be careful now when you pick it up."

  
Silga did as she was told, and both Yulia and Faora gasped as she swished her hand around in the water and produced a thick bronze coin. Then she bent again and picked up a piece of jagged glass, upon which the word vodka was labeled in bright red letters. Faora and Yulia stood, mouths slack and eyes wide, but Kara chuckled.

  
“It’s a parlor trick,” she said, gazing at the girls reassuringly. “He’s playing a prank.”

Non swiveled to face her. “Is it?" Kara felt her body tense as Non ran his eyes over her, letting them fall to her waist, her pocket. "What's that then?"

Kara forced another laugh. “Nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing," Non said. "Doctor Luthor give that to you?”

Kara hadn't meant to give in, had meant to call the boy's bluff, but she felt herself lower her head, her eyes averted as she gave a brief nod that said 'lying.'

She hadn’t meant to steal it. Doctor Luthor had dropped it from some papers he'd been carrying as he walked away. It looked like a stamp, perhaps one of those special ones with which the Chinese visitors signed their names. Kara had gone to retrieve it, to return it to him, but once her skin made contact with the material, the object made contact with her. There was a warmth to the metal, and Kara felt a sudden, dizzying sense of falling into something. It worked like a smell, she thought, sending her hurtling back through time. But scent memories had always been fleeting, leaving her staggering off a precipice into the space where the memory had been. This feeling though? It climbed up inside of her, curled around her like a cloud of smoke that took on the shapes of things she recognized but could not name. 

Kara had closed her eyes then, heard Doctor Luthor stop in the corridor. She was still kneeling, her free hand pressed into the carpet. She took a deep breath and reached behind her slowly, tucking the object into the back of her trousers before she pushed herself to her feet. 

“Are you all right, Six?” the doctor said.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I-I fell.”

At night, she held that object to her under the covers, lifting the blanket to squint at its markings in the dim light of her sleeping cell. And each morning, she swore to herself that she would drop it somewhere, slip it back into the Doctor’s briefcase or toss it in the woods. She couldn't. There was something in it that whispered to her, spoke of home and answers, and parting with it would be like parting with a piece of herself. 

“Why did you keep this from me, Kara?” Non said, now in a whisper. This was between them now, a battle for the knowledge Non had jealously kept to himself. Kara swallowed, facing him down as the other children looked on nervously. 

“Subject Six!”

Both of them turned to see one of the guards approaching, his expression sour and full of the false vigilance of a man who just minutes ago was slacking at the job. “Doctor Luthor requests your immediate presence at the facility.”

Kara turned, her hand steady in her pocket as she walked away.

"We'll talk later, Subject Six," Non called after her.

Today, Kara noted, the doctor seemed even more impatient, and his greeting was curt and toneless. On the way to the elevator, he'd been stopped by Doctor Tamm, and the two had exchanged words in Russian. Kara was picking it up and could have learned much faster if they ever spoke enough of it around her. Like today. Today, there was a caution about them that made them careless about other things.

Tamm said something about 'diverting the power...maker? They had a weakened 'safe' system." The doctor batted away her concerns.

“I'm getting close, Marta," he said, "I need this."

Doctor Tamm made a long face and turned abruptly, her footsteps punctuating her frustration. Then the doctor smiled back at Kara and took her hand. “We’re trying a new trick today, Six,” he said. “See if you can please me this time.”

Kara, her free hand in her pocket, ran her thumb over the object. Non thought he had her cornered. And now the doctor looked cornered by circumstances and was cornering Kara in response. She clenched her jaw and inhaled, and then said through her teeth, "Kara."

The doctor tilted his head at her, confused. “New game?”

“No,” she said, “Not a game. My name is Kara. Kara Zor…” the rest of it escaped her. But it was coming back to her. And it was right. She knew it was right.

The doctor snorted. “Women." He clasped her wrist harder and pulled her into the chamber. Giving her a little shove from behind as they crossed the threshold. Inside, taking up the center of the room, was a chair.

A chair of leather straps and wires, a skull cap dangled from the arm like a flap of skin.

“This time," Luthor said, gesturing casually for her to sit, as if the contraption was just another one of the chairs in the mess hall, "we're going to give you a little jolt, see if that gets their attention."

Before she could take a step backward, Luthor had her by the wrists. He was lifting her easily from the floor, carrying her to the chair like a trophy hunter holding up a kill. "Come on, Little Six, do not make this hard."

Maybe it was the object or the fact that Non had threatened her, or the added dash of nastiness in the doctor's tone, but Kara felt something break inside her. As Luthor turned, still holding her aloft over the seat of the chair, she raised her legs and kicked him in the chest. Hard. Kara's wrists slipped from his grip, and she dropped to the floor as he flew back, hitting the wall with such force Kara thought that she had set off the alarm.

The sound was piercing, a hundred frequencies all screaming over one another. The doctor wasn't even looking at her as he rose, still dry heaving from the force of her kick. A trickle of blood ran from his nose and he wiped it on the sleeve of his jacket. Then he hurried over to the instrument board and cursed as yet another alert sounded. This one in words: "Security breached on levels three…two…seven…"

“Bloody anti-Bolshevists,” he said. He glanced over at Kara and winked as if nothing had happened, as if nothing were happening. “They don't like our being here. Come on, little Six. Another day.”

  
He took her hand, more gently this time, and tried to pull her to the back of the room. "Seven's got us covered," he said, pointing to the ceiling. Above them, Kara could see the thick slat of a steel barrier, one that the doctor was now keying in the code to lower. "We'll be safe in here," he said.

She felt a stab of panic. Tried to step away from him, but he held fast to her hand. There was the crackle of gunfire in the corridor now, the sound of boots slamming against stone. Kara pulled away again, willing for the strength of the kick to return to her, but the doctor's grip was a vice.

"Don't you bloody fight me," he said, "you'll regret it."

And that's when they both looked up to see a woman, strikingly beautiful with dark hair and eyes as green as the sea in Kara's storybooks. She was flanked by two men, both in canvass tunics and aiming their rifles in Kara and the doctor's direction. Luthor was still holding fast to Kara, his other hand pressing madly at the numbered board on the wall."Oh...no you don't," he said, more to himself. 

The woman didn't even look at him.  She bent slowly and reached out her hand. “Come with me, Little one. Come with me and see the ocean. The stars. The sky.”  
And in that brief instant of silence that followed, Kara realized that what the woman was speaking was not Estonian, nor Russian, nor the Chinese dialect of the visitors who'd come to the facility, but a language Kara knew--still knew--from somewhere deep in her soul.

_NazgeRestRa KiredHelev naKluv Voi_

Kara’s lips quivered as she answered, the words faltering in her throat, “Rraop...zehdh?” _Are you...home?_  


The woman’s face eased into a smile of sympathy, a tenderness Kara could not remember from so many years locked up and surveilled. The guards made to fire on Lionel as he tried to pull Kara back, but the woman waved them off. Her gaze intent on the girl. “Nah Kettsteri.” _Be brave, little one._

And with those words, Kara's fear became anger and determination. And something else. Hope. She stopped trying to escape from the doctor’s grip, reaching up with her other hand to take him by the wrist. Her fingers closed hard around skin and bone until she heard something crack. Luthor cried out and seeing her cue, Kara yanked hard and sent him reeling against the brick with the force of a construction crane. Then she hurried into the woman's arms, and all four turned and fled down the flickering corridor.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired by John Wyndham's Chrysalids. Also, Purity deserved a resurrection. The Soviet Union did not annex Estonia until 1940, but there was a tug-of-war long in play. The facility is one of those secret concessions.


	21. Countdown

Lena lay in darkness, watching the shadows on the ceiling shift with the rippling of the curtains. A crack in the windowpane had brought in a draught, but she wasn’t cold. Kara’s body was wrapped tightly around her, giving off heat that bordered on discomfort. She pressed her face into the damp warmth of Kara’s hair, once more repressing the urge to pull her closer, to start again what had worked them both into exhaustion. Kara stirred and Lena stilled, counting the steady rise and fall of her breath as it lapped over her racing thoughts, slowing them, easing them, but not enough to bring on sleep.  

_How had this happened?_

Lena had always liked to direct the lovemaking, to divert the sloppiness men were prone to once they got what they wanted. But when Kara had made her intentions clear, when she had slowly tugged the sash from her robe, Lena felt herself go limp and passive. A feverish child being whisked off to bed. Kara had stopped then, had reached over to take Lena’s hand, cradling it gently against her chest.

“Is this what you want?”

The words were gentle, almost hesitant, but to Lena, always distant and always in control, they only reminded her of what little choice she had. To sleep now, to let her mind acquiesce the way her body had, would be to give in completely, to tumble open-hearted and willing into a strange new land of uncertainty. Here was a vulnerability she had never once come close to feeling, not when her father disappeared and Lillian had hurried her off to England. Not with the string of lovers she’d taken at boarding school--not with Jack.

Yet Lena _had_ acted willingly. She'd felt her hands spring to life, unbuttoning Kara’s gown, awkwardly at first, the tiny clasps slipping from her fingers. She'd even managed to joke.

“This would be easier if you were in dress uniform."

She slipped her hand under the fabric, delighting at the warmth of the girl’s skin and Kara had laughed and kissed her again, an agonizingly slow kiss that sent Lena scrambling for the hem of the girl's dress.

“You’re beautiful,” Kara whispered as Lena tugged at the fabric, pulling it up over her head. Lena stood, her own robe falling to the floor as she tossed Kara's dress aside. The girl smiled and slipped her arms around her waist, her index finger, snaking up Lena’s spine, provoking a gasp as Lena stepped into her warmth. Kara held her to her, her cheeks ghosting Lena's as if she was trying to preserve the moment. “I've waited for you.  For this," she said.

Prior to those words, Lena had thought of Kara as the innocent, some isolated, lonely girl needing to be coaxed out of her shell. But the confidence with which she had touched her, the way she took control of her body as if she knew it better than Lena herself, offered up an unsettling counter-narrative. What if it was Kara who'd been drawing _her_ out? And what if her purpose was for something other than love? The only certainty, she realized with the sureness of the ache in her heart, was that it had _worked_.

She shifted to her side, peering through the darkness at Kara's face. In sleep, her expression was preternaturally serene, exuding the same cool efficiency she displayed in the isolation chamber. Sensing the distance, Kara murmured in protest and nuzzled back into Lena's body. 

“I’m sorry,” Lena whispered. With her free hand, she tugged the blankets back over them. “Cold?”

Kara's lips moved soundlessly, engaged in a separate and seemingly strained conversation.

_“EshtRen Al eyniye.”_

Nonsense. Some half-slurred dispatch from a dream.

 _“om no-Al ZhesHtari_.”

The accent was foreign and its cadence consistent. Lena smiled, happy for the distraction and tucked a strand of the girl's hair behind her ear.

“Thoughts love?"

She hadn't expected an answer, but Kara did, raising her leg and kicking violently against the wall behind her. Lena swore she could hear the boards crack as the bed shook. Violently.

_“EshtRen Al eyniye om no-Al ZhesHtari!”_

She kicked again, her fingers digging painfully into Lena's back.

"Kara? Kara stop!"

The girl was crushing her now, squeezing the breath from her, her features contorted in anger.

“ _om_ _no-Al ZhesHtari!”_

She clung fast to Lena, this time kicking the bedpost and snapping off the bronze scythe ornament at the top. It hit the floor with a loud thud. 

“Stop! Kara!” Lena reached up with her free hand and smacked the girl hard across the face. “It's a dream!”

Kara’s eyes snapped open, her face and body were now rigid with fear. She released Lena and bolted up, scooting away from her on the bed, her hand raised to her face. Lena went to steady her, but Kara, her breath heavy and her eyes lost, inched back further. For an instant, Lena worried Kara was ashamed. That the night had been some drunken tryst. Lena watched her, frozen with fear as the girl's gaze sharpened.

 “I…” Kara stumbled. She brought both hands to her face, tugging at her cheeks now wet with tears. "Did I hurt you?"

“You were dreaming,” Lena said. "It's fine."

Kara’s face went slack with relief. She edged closer to her now, hesitant, and Lena crawled back into her embrace. She closed her eyes and let herself breathe. “You just sounded…intense.”

Kara brought her lips to Lena’s forehead, her cheeks; she dipped her face into her neck. Lena felt her body stir again.

"Are you happy?"

Lena bit her lip and let the word leave her with a cold start of the unfamiliar. "Yes."

Kara beamed then, leaning in to kiss her with a gentle force, her hand stroking Lena's cheek. "Because I...I’ve never been so happy," she said. 

Then she slipped an arm around her and leaned back, stroking her hair. This time, Lena let herself go, let herself drift into a sleep as dreamless and lost as the night sky.

 #

The tremor woke her, the thin walls of the cottage rattling to the sound of passing trucks. Lena sat up, skin prickling at the returned chill in the room. She switched on the light, her free hand feeling around the empty mattress. The warmth was still there, but Kara had gone.

She’d expected that. The girl must have hurried back to her quarters before her absence was noticed. She straightened and slipped her legs over the edge of the bed, her feet protesting the cold tile floor as she plucked up her robe. The trucks kept coming--one after another in a barrage of noise and vibration. Had something gone wrong? Someone would have come. She would have heard the klaxons at any rate, but she hurried to the window, her mouth agape as she took in the convoy. A long row of military trucks, their high beams slicing through the dawn. In the distance she could see the lights of the assembly building. All of them on.

_The launch tower._

“What in Lenin's name?” The question was interrupted by a pounding at the door. 

She took a deep breath and tightened the sash on her robe. They couldn’t be coming for her. Not this many. The KGB had always liked to be quiet about arrests. She set her jaw and opened the door, hoping to keep it only slightly ajar, but the person on the other side shoved it with enough force to send her stumbling. 

There were two MPs, neither of whom she had seen around the facility. They stood in front of her like grim statues. The one who’d pushed the door open doffed his cap.

“Chief Engineer. Your presence has been requested at Site One. You have five minutes. We’ll wait in the car.”

“Site One?" the words came as a cough. "Has something gone wrong?"

The MP looked at his companion uncertainly and then turned back to her. “Nothing has gone wrong, Comrade Luthor," he said, beaming now as if pleased to deliver the good news. "The launch is on schedule.”

 “Launch?” Lena said.  “That’s not--” She stopped herself. _Let him speak. He doesn't know._

“For this morning,” the guard said. "Very exciting. I would advise that you hurry, Comrade. You won't want to miss it."

The launch had been scheduled for three days from now, its orbit carefully timed to overlap with the unmanned Kosmos module. _That_ had been the cover mission for the delivery of the payload, of course. But had the payload been a ploy for an even larger conspiracy? Her mind pivoted to J’onn? Did he _know_? _Had_ he known? She felt sick. The world was now reeling around her, and at the edge of it, spinning out farther and farther of reach was Kara.

The guard was staring at her. "Best to hurry Comrade Engineer," he said. 

As they sped toward the facility, past the line of military trucks, it was clear that the entire operation was under siege. The usual lax checkpoints, meant more to fend off Kazakh herdsmen, were now fortified with soldiers toting Kalashnikov rifles and men in drab Moscow haberdashery now strutted among the technicians and workers, barking orders, their eyes like hawks.

When Lena was led into the control room and saw Victor Gruskov look back at her from the monitor, she the ice cold flow of rage running through her, tensing her body like a nerve agent.  Gruskov had been play-acting at the OK45 office, planning this coup with the military all along. He must have offered them something big to pull this one off, something likely very destructive. Gruskov nodded at her, a bare acknowledgment to signal her lowered status, and turned back to his work. Then J'onn was there, his hands clasping her shoulders. He looked pale and frightened as if all the trauma from the gulag had returned in the space of a few minutes. She dropped their formal distance and pulled him into an embrace.

"Oh god, J'onn. I'm so sorry."

“It is I who should be, Lena,” he said, holding her tightly. "I did not know."

 “I believe you," she said, "What _do_ you know now?”

“Brass,” he said. He pulled back and glanced around warily. “I got word they were coming thirty minutes before they arrived. Gruskov's taken over the project. They're keeping me here out of spite, I suppose."

Lena looked into his eyes and shook her head. "Oh _no_ , they're not, J'onn." She nodded over at Gruskov, who was yelling, spittle flying,  at two communications officers. " _That_ man is ambitious, a genius even, but he has no respect for life. I know the type. Someone in the Kremlin wants you here as a failsafe. And your people," she glanced at two of the technicians who waved at her uncertainly, "they don't trust that bastard either."

J'onn managed a smile and slipped an arm around Lena's shoulders, escorting her out of earshot of the guards. "I tried to get you here sooner. They wouldn't let me until the launch was locked-in."

“Did you see Starikov?" Lena asked, "the others?”

J'onn reached down and took Lena's hand, squeezing it tightly. "It was too late."

Preparations for countdown began over the loudspeaker _,_ and Lena felt a cold sweat break as J'onn gently pushed her through the doors toward the observation deck.

_Kara._

_Decyat’_

Lena winced at the number. In the distance, the cone of the rocket, silhouetted against the blue dawn, stood rigidly as the arm fell away.  Lena watched, her heart hammering, as the coolant snaked from the bottom of the platform _.  
_

_Devyat’_

“Lena,” J'onn said, pulling her to him. “She will be all right...”

_Perhaps that thing was a fake. Another mock-up Ivan Ivanovitch. Another borscht recipe on a tape reel._

__S_ em’_

"...we'll watch this rocket go up," J'onn continued, his voice raw and determined. "Then we'll watch the others. And listen and learn. Just as they've done to us..." 

  
___But what would have been the point of that? They were sending up human pilots? And it had looked so real. Alive.  
_ _ _

  
____Pyat’_ _ _ _

"...and we'll bring Comrade Starikov and the others home. Safely. I promise you, Lena. You have my word."

_Tri_

But it struck Lena now that perhaps Kara hadn't wanted to return at all, and Kara's words, spoken in the heat of passion, now turned in her mind with a cold conviction. 

_Dva_

_There is no time, Lenotchka. There is no time._

_Odin_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a hellion to stage. Hope it worked. More Kara POV and Young Sanvers on the way.


	22. Interlude

“I had a sister,” Alex said. “ _Have_. Somewhere.”

“You got separated?” Maggie pushed herself up against the iron bedpost, her expression attentive, but Alex looked away. 

“You could call it that.”

She had come in today on the pretext of checking Maggie’s leg only to find  ‘Olga the Unpleasant'-- that same lazy, resentful nurse Maggie had tangled with when she’d brought in the dying Piotr--administering a sponge bath. Maggie was leaning back, her jaw set and her eyes locked on the ceiling as Olga roughly dragged a rag over her stomach. Alex would have laughed, but instead, she was struck dumb by the sight of the lieutenant's broad shoulders, that lustrous dark hair trailing over her tanned skin. Olga turned, almost catching Alex’s expression of slack-jawed adoration before she could shift it into an officious frown. 

“Olga Nadzhenko,” she said, “you’re wanted in the Fever ward.”

Olga stayed put for a moment, glancing suspiciously between the two women as if they were about to trade black market rations. 

 “Not my orders,” Alex said, her voice cool. “Doctor Gorky’s. Go now.” A bald-faced lie, but Gorky, perpetually overworked and understaffed, wouldn’t question the extra help. The nurse slapped the rag noisily in the basin and grumbled something about “airs” as she stormed out.  

They'd laughed together once Olga was out of earshot, and then let that laughter dwindle into an an easy silence until Maggie asked Alex about her family and met a wall. She understood. After Oscar had thrown her out, she felt like the outlier when she listened to the others in her unit speak fondly of loved ones back home--even when they'd lost them, especially when they'd lost them. Alex was different and Maggie didn't press, and soon the other woman--the girl really--smiled and turned back, tracing her finger along the scar on Maggie’s shoulder. “How did you get this?”   

Maggie tilted her face into the back of Alex’s hand and smiled off her deflection. “We ran into a firefight between a stray Panzer unit and some partisans. Let’s just say the latter were happy to see us.”

“I’ll bet,” Alex said, keeping her eyes fixed on the scar, afraid to let them travel elsewhere. Since that day on the boat, she had wondered about the frayed golden braid on her uniform. She stroked the thin line with her thumb, delighting in the feel of Maggie’s skin on both sides of her hand, wondering what it would be like to feel her body wrapped around her, to be enfolded in its warmth. “It must have hurt.”

Maggie chuckled and Alex looked up, suddenly self-conscious. “I mean, of course, it would. It _would_ hurt.”

“Not bad for a doctor, Danvers,” Maggie said, placing her hand over the other woman’s.

They hadn’t talked about the kiss; Alex had been too busy and Maggie had spent the first day shivering off a fever, but now the easy silence between them and Maggie’s steady smile prompted her to try. “I…” She paused, her courage already faltering.

Maggie squeezed her hand. “You?” 

Alex lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m supposed to looking at your wound, and all I want to do is kiss you right now.”

“Why don’t you?” 

Alex looked around. They were hidden by curtains that partitioned Maggie’s bed from the others, but the shadows flitting by seemed oppressively close. “Someone will come.”

“You weren’t worried the last time.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Alex said, and feeling her heart race like a kid on a dare, she bent and pressed a tender kiss to Maggie’s scar, breathing in her scent as she reluctantly pulled away. To Alex, the move had felt bold, even risqué, but Maggie laughed and she shot up, her head clocking the lamp hanging over the bed, sending it swinging. 

“A proper kiss,” Maggie said, “wouldn’t require—”

“—pain?” Alex said, rubbing the back of her head. 

“I was going to say slapstick,” Maggie said, and Alex felt herself breaking into a broad smile.

“What am I going to do with you?”

“I have an idea.”

Alex glanced around once more and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips, but Maggie deftly slipped her hand behind her head, her fingers tangling in her hair, gently massaging the sore spot. She kept her gently in place, and Alex, uncertain but drawn, bent to meet her lips. The kiss was gentle at first, but Maggie shifted, placing her warm palm against Alex’s abdomen, tugging at her shirt, and Alex felt herself stir, scooting closer as the blanket dropped between them. She felt the soft curves of Maggie’s breasts through her smock and stifled a gasp. The words tumbled out, breathless and bewildered. “I want to be alone with you.”

“We will be,” Maggie said, her voice ragged, and Alex felt her whole body jump as Maggie's fingers brushed her stomach. “Soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post this on the 28th in honor of a certain pizza delivery. Also, it was my one year fic birthday—Do we get fic birthdays?—but life stepped in, as it will soon for these ladies.


	23. Passing Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of a longer update. More to come soon.

_That day in Moscow, it will all come true._

_When, for the last time, I take my leave,_

_And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,_

_Leaving my shadow still to be with you._

Anna Akhmatova

This wasn’t the first time her body had defied gravity. But it was the first time she had done so openly and in front of others. How long had she waited for this? To feel herself free of the weight of the earth? But as the Zvezda reached freefall, Kara felt her heart sinking, weighted down by the very thing that, in the confines of Earth’s gravity, had once allowed it to soar.

She thought of a poem from a volume Astra had given her, by a woman whose work had also been censored out of existence. 

_My shadow is still with you, Lena,_ she thought. _It will pass over you almost on the hour.  
_

And there were others whose memory tugged at her, less powerfully perhaps, thanks to time, but they pulled her down all the same.  


She had loved them from the beginning, that family who filled their house with books and warmth and conversation. She loved how every morning Eliza would descend that roughly hewn staircase and open the windows to the sun and fresh air. Those things, like music or extra food rations, had been jealously parceled out at the facility.

Unlike Doctor Luthor and his workers, the Danvers would talk to her, explain things: how the pack horses slept standing up, how the radio worked, or even the complicated instruments in their laboratory. They treated her curiosity as something to be encouraged, cherished. 

But not Alex.

The older girl would sit across from her at mealtimes, wordless and sulking. On a good day, she might offer up a sneer at the amount Kara ate. At the variety of it. Alex was picky, a source of constant exasperation for Eliza.

“A Russian who doesn’t eat cabbage or black bread,” Eliza would say, and the girl would scoff out a usual retort about rabbits or birds.

Sometimes, and clearly under her parents' orders, she would take Kara for hikes in the forest, or, more disastrously, the rundown cinema at the center of town. 

The first time, it was a silent picture _\--_ Trenevosk often made do with whatever older print was available-- and before it had even started, Kara was restless and unimpressed.

“It is beautiful outside,” she said, “Sunny, just a slight chill in the air. Why is everyone just sitting in here gnawing at cucumbers and staring at a curtain?"

Alex rolled her eyes before training them resolutely ahead. “Just wait,” 

And then the lights went out.

Kara sat up and looked about. Where were the voices? Why weren't the people around her reacting? “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Alex hissed. She folded her arms and sank back further into her seat.

“But we’re in the dark.”

“Shhh!”

That’s when the music blared, discordant and ominous and the curtains billowed as they drew back. Kara glanced up, blinking as a beam of white light shot overhead to burn a shimmering door that covered the wall in front of her. It loomed open, a bright square beckoning the crowd, but the spectators remained motionless, passive shadows who sat mesmerized as the words flashed before them. 

_Aelita: Queen of Mars!_

“Alex?” Kara tugged at the girl's arm, flinching at the crash of cymbals, the mournful blare of a horn. Above her now was a barren landscape, shimmering, yet entirely sapped of color. Then more words, alien and mysterious. 

_Anta…Odeli…Uta._

People flickered into life, faces, hands, bodies, flitting across the screen as if emerging from another plane in space. And Kara felt a memory spark, a cube hovering above her in the night sky, turning slowly, endlessly as it retreated into the void. There were people inside, their faces and palms pressed against the surface. They made no sound, but their eyes were fearful, desperate, and their mouths howled silently for release. The people before her though, they didn't even see that they were trapped. Like the landscape, they too were drained of color, their movements stiff and jerky, and always, even when their faces loomed large and close to the door, they didn't even look out. 

“Alex?” Kara said again, her breath quick. "Alex? They--" She reached over and took the girl's arm, but Alex jerked it away. 

“I said to be quiet," she whispered. "Do you want to get us kicked out?”

Kara cast one more glance at the screen. The people were gone now. Their existence replaced by a flashing tower, and then there were others; people in a different place, moving about oblivious to their entrapment. She looked between Alex, now determinedly unresponsive, and the large man on the other side of her, and squeezed her eyes shut. Then, with a deep, but unsteady breath, she pushed herself up and clambered over the seatback. 

"Kara, what are you--"

She heard Alex gasp and felt the girl's fingers around her wrist. Alex tried to pull her back down into her seat, but it was Kara's turn to yank her arm free. She just wanted to get as far as she could, from the thing that had swallowed up those people, from the memory now clawing at up at her from some deep well in her past. She smacked Alex's hand, hard, causing the girl to yelp. Then she kicked her legs against the seatback and tumbled into the row behind her. 

“Kara!”

She opened her eyes and saw Alex standing now, her shoulders squared against the protests of a young couple sitting a few rows behind them. 

"Clowns!" the boy said. "I'll bloody hide you!"

Kara ignored them and scrambled for the exit, and Alex followed, catching her firmly by the arm and shoving the younger girl through the swinging doors into the lobby. 

"What is wrong with you?" 

Blinking against the light, she watched Alex's anger diminish into incredulity as she continued to sputter about where they hid the musicians, and why were the people so big? And why was the color sapped from them if they were alive? And moving? And how could they not see?

"You..." Alex said. "You really don't know what a movie is."

"Alex," Kara said. "You must...how can you..."

And Alex reached out and pulled Kara into an embrace. "It's okay," she said, stroking her hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize..." 

She pulled away and wiped a tear from Kara's cheek. “C’mere,” she said, more softly this time. She took her hand and led her to one of the worn sofas in the lobby. Then she looked away, thoughtful for a moment, her hand circling the air, conjuring the right words. “That wasn’t real,” she said, taking a seat beside her. “They were just…pictures. All strung together on a reel. They spin it in front of a bright light. That's what creates the movement.”

Kara closed her eyes and said in halting Russian, “but wouldn’t we just see everything blur together then?”

Alex squinted at her for a moment, surprised. “There’s a shutter. Like a little door that lifts and falls between each frame, cuts off the light--so fast that we can only detect a flicker." She raised her hand and made a quick, fluttering motion in front of Kara's eyes. "It's a trick, see? Makes you think you're seeing motion when it's really just a succession of images."

Kara nodded. "I didn't mean to embarrass you," she said. 

She didn't tell her about the memory, about the screaming in the sky. Alex was being kind to her now, and the last thing she wanted was to make her close herself off again, turn back into that girl who saw Kara as a pest, a fly beating against the window pane in their room. 

Alex bit her lip, then, almost grudgingly, brushed some hair from Kara’s face. “So, you think you can handle it? Want to go back in?”

Kara nodded, wanting more than anything to please her. She let Alex take her hand and lead her back into the darkness of the auditorium. They sat further back this time and near the exit, and Kara with Alex's hand in hers, soon found herself enthralled by the tale of Los, a young worker beloved from afar by the Martian Queen who spies on him with a telescope. For Los, it was a daydream, but as the narrative reeled out before her, Kara thought about what Astra had told her of her birthright. "Your origins are mostly a mystery," she said, "We don't know much beyond the language and a few artifacts, a few Nansi prophecies, which we're not sure existed before your arrival. You might be of this Earth or not. You might be from another plane. Magical even. But you, Kara Zor-El, are here for a reason and it's not one the bloody Luthors get to decide. It's our hope that freedom will help reveal it to you."

She thought of Non’s words, his taunts, how he hinted at other possibilities, abilities. 

Was it possible that she came from another world? And if so, were the people of that world looking down on her? Perhaps worried or sad or afraid? These thoughts clouded her mind as they left the theater. She wanted to talk to Alex, who was chattering amiably about the ending being a cop-out. Perhaps she might listen to her now, but as they passed under the marquee, another voice intruded.

“Alex?”

It was a girl’s voice, world-weary and haughty despite its youth. Kara turned around to see Alex's face tense in a mix of consternation and longing. Leaning against a poster for a coming attraction was a pretty girl with dishwater blonde hair. She was holding the hand of a boy in a sailors' uniform. He gave them a desultory glance and spat a gob of something onto the pavement.

“Vika?” Alex said. She stepped toward her uncertainly. "I thought you were sick. I mean, yesterday when I asked if you--"

"I got better," the girl said listlessly. The boy smirked and tucked a cigarette between his lips. He shifted his feet impatiently, and Vika gave him a placating smile. Then she turned back to Alex and said, “I thought that was you in there. What happened?”

"Oh..."Alex’s face went red, "you were in there." She shot a warning look at Kara. "It was nothing. She was sick."

The girl craned her head, her eyes running over Kara like she was taking in a handbag. “Didn't say you had a sister.”

Alex’s mouth dropped. “I _don’t._ I mean, she’s no one.”

“Let’s go, Vika,” the boy said.

The girl looked back at the boyfriend and shrugged. “Well,” she said, "It's good you found someone to go to the movies with, right?" Then she spun on her heel, leaning into the boy as he slipped an arm around her waist and they walked away. 

Kara watched as Alex let out a barely audible 'goodbye,' lifting her hand lightly, letting it hang there motionless as if time had stopped at the moment just before the girl departed. It reminded Kara of the cinema, the way time slowed and sped up as an expression of feeling. For Alex the moment was still inching along slowly and painfully, while for the girl, now hurriedly walking away, it was already long past. 

“Who was that?” Kara asked and instantly regretted the question. Alex's hand lowered and her fingers balled into a fist. 

“No one,” she said, and Kara realized that she had just said the same thing about her. 

But it didn't hurt. Not this time, for Kara knew what it was like. How could anyone know what others were to them if they did not know themselves? And Alex, lonely and flailing Alex--to whom two people that day were no one--clearly did not. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took some liberties with Aelita: Queen of Mars in the opening description, especially the music. It had likely fallen out of favor under Stalin, but Martians were needed. (; A full version is available on YouTube if you're interested in seeing it.


	24. Shutterlight

_I was gay, and bold, and wicked,_

_And never knew I was happy  
_

 

Anna Akhmatova

Kara often went back after that, sitting transfixed in the dark, letting the German hit _Pandora’s Box_ and _Battleship Potemkin_ startle up the memories inside her. Lulu’s decadent gown recalled a gathering of men and women in similar silvery attire. Then there were the crowds. Soviet cinema loved to linger on the masses, swarming with anger and unrest against rulers, all cruel or incapable, oblivious to the rage that was about to roll over them like a flash fire. She caught a glimpse of her mother leaning out over a balcony as hot stones rained down in the square below. She remembered her father placing a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her. _It's nothing. Just a hitch in the gravity, but we're safe._ And she remembered another man, resembling him, but darker, his expression grim.

_Zor, you know that's not true._

For Kara, the world seemed to open up in that darkness, but Alex only became more closed to her. After the encounter with Vika, she refused to go into town. She'd stay at her desk for hours, buried in her studies and scribbling to herself in a notebook she kept high on a shelf in their room. 

Kara wanted to talk to her, wanted to tell how it was odd that after everything Doctor Luthor had tried, after the pain he'd inflicted on her and the others-- how even Astra's gentle coaxing in words from a long-buried language--had failed to work the miracle of this strange apparatus. A backdoor to her past. But it did make an odd kind of sense. Those images running through the projector _were_ the past, millions of fragments melding together as an offering to the present. But Alex wasn't interested. She stayed mired in a present from which she now worked furiously to free herself. 

Kara began to wonder if she could slow down those moments on the screen, crystallize them. And one afternoon, during a matinee of _Cosmic Voyage_ , she pressed her hands to her temples and narrowed her eyes, keeping her gaze on a narrow portion of the screen.

 _Focus_ , she told herself. _Keep pace with the flicker. Capture it._

Suddenly, the shadows on the screen slowed and stopped, partitioned themselves into separate instants, still, then apart. Then together. Now apart again. Slow, fast, slow, fast, slow. 

Two worlds existing in the same plane. The same world existing separately. 

Kara let out a laugh of exhilaration. Discovery. She ducked out of the theater during the newsreels. She wanted to tell Alex, wanted to thank her for that day, to tell her how she had _seen_ the pictures separate and go still, _just_ as Alex had explained to her.

As she opened the door to their shared bedroom, she saw the girl slumped over her desk, her shoulders shaking softly. 

"Alex?"

Alex stiffened and sat up, pressing her face into her hands. “What is it?” she said.

“I went to see Cosmic Voyage,” Kara said, "and I, I stopped the rocket! Right there. In the sky!"

Alex turned back and Kara saw that her face was blotchy. “ _What?_ " she said acidly. 

“Are you okay?” Kara said.

She saw Alex’s nostrils flare and then the girl wiped her sleeve across her face. After a long silence, she stood up and proceeded to her dresser, from which she produced a ball of orange yarn.

“As I've said before, Kara...” She began unraveling the yarn and tied it to a coat hook on one end of the room, “don't bother me when I'm studying.”  She let it unspool as she backed across the room, then tied the other end to the leg of an empty chair. “Your side. My side.”

“Is this a game?” Kara said, her voice trailing off. 

Alex glared and turned back to her books. She yanked out her chair and flopped into it. Then she turned and pointed threateningly at the yarn.

 “ _You_ don’t come here, see? This is  _my_ space.”

Kara’s heart dropped. "I'm sorry," she said,  her Russian once again growing hesitant and thick. "I want, wanted to tell you..."

 "You can tell me later. Next year would be nice."

 “This is…” Kara said, running her finger over the yarn, “like a shock line?”

Alex turned back, scoffing. “A  _what_?”

“A fence, that shocks. They had these at the facility. Yulia touched one. She burned her hands. Bad.  And her tongue was sticking out. She was in the sickbay for days.

“You were on a farm?” Alex said, the disdain weakening in her voice. "Must have been raising your own bears to have that kind of fencing."

Kara clasped her hands together, held them out and stretched them, before saying in a hesitant tone. “No. They were meant for us.”

She saw Alex turn slightly. The girl continued to write in her notebook, but she was listening and Kara so needed to be listened to. 

“We had to stay in our rooms when it wasn’t eating or exercise time, or they didn’t need us for experiments. We couldn’t visit one another.”

Alex’s pencil stopped. Kara saw the girl's shoulders rise slightly as she inhaled with either impatience or hesitation.

“Why not?” She heard the pencil fall to the paper.

Kara shrugged. “Rules.”

Alex’s head sagged. She rubbed her face and then let out a breath. “Get over here,” she said after a minute.

“Are you sure?” Kara gestured to the string and Alex, still unsmiling and resigned, nodded.

 “Besides, you’re making a mistake with your verb collocations.”

She gestured Kara over again and then stood, pulling up the extra chair by her desk, the one Eliza used when she tutored her. 

“It’s okay,” she said, perusing the shelf above her desk,  “a lot of native Russians do it, but it’s best to catch it. Teachers get mad. Here it is,” she said, pulling down a tattered exercise book. “Come sit now. I’ll show you.”

As Kara took her seat, she saw Alex place the exercise book over a small piece of paper, upon which a name had been written, over and over in a looping cursive. 

_Vika_

Alex, too, was playing with time. Splitting her memory into sections to be collected and contemplated, reeling her thoughts forward and back over the page. _  
_

The next morning, the yarn was gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for posting this in short chunks, but sprints are the order of the day with the holidays and a visit to PDX fast approaching. Thank you for your patience and for reading.  
> Cosmic Voyage is also available on YouTube.


	25. Your Distant Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was a terror, no pun intended. 
> 
> A Happy Beebo Day to All!

_Bound for your distant home_  
you were leaving alien lands.  
In an hour as sad as I’ve known  
I wept over your hands.  
My hands were numb and cold,  
still trying to restrain  
you, whom my hurt told  
never to end this pain.

__

  
_Alexander Pushkin_

_1940_

She remembered the night they took her away. Remembered the snow lightly dusting the path ahead of her as she made her way from school. She’d been happy that day. There had been a recital and not one, but two teachers had praised both her voice and her aptitude for mathematics. That night she was to meet Alex and Eliza at the cinema--Jeremiah would come later if he could--and she couldn’t wait to tell them, to make them proud of her. She wanted to ease Eliza’s fears and those of Alex who now, after that day with the yarn, fiercely protected her from anything so much as a sidelong glance. After nearly two years, she was finally easing into life in Trenevosk. It felt momentous after so many long months of being teased by peers, by teachers who glowered suspiciously at her strange accent and chastised her for drawings of red instead of yellow suns.

“Realism,” Miss Kuschenko would snap, “ _that_ is what we aim for in art. Flights of fancy are for the capitalists.”

Kara wanted to ask Miss Kuschenko why they didn’t just close down the ballet, or why Stalin insisted that life was good when there were people being dragged away from their homes, and those who were free were starving in the streets. But even more, she wanted to tell her that a red sun _was_ realism; it was real because it took up so many of her memories, turning her mother’s hair to amber as she stood on the balcony at sundown, setting the paving stones of Imzaresh to blush in the dawn light during the call to prayer.

The more Kara remembered of her world, the more she should have felt apart from the Danvers, from that small community of Trenevosk to which she had come as a stranger, but the opposite was happening. And, when those rough hands grabbed her from behind, when they pressed the cloth over her nose and mouth and the air became suffused with the sickly smell of chloroform, she felt the fresh, yet all too familiar pain of being dragged away.

From home.

When she woke, she was in the back of a truck, her throat parched and her hands bound behind her back as the slats in the reefer floor ground painfully into her legs and buttocks. Jeremiah lay slumped beside her, unconscious, his face bruised and a coat of dried blood caked around his lip. Kara peered through the darkness to see a single guard leaning against the door of the vehicle, his rifle poised but his eyes elsewhere, disinterested.

Kara called and he ignored her. When she spoke again, he waved his gun. She stopped and moved closer to Jeremiah’s inert body for warmth, trying to nudge him awake with her knee, leaning down to whisper at him, but like the guard, he was recalcitrant, his eyes closed and his back to the wall. Hours later, as the truck turned abruptly and began lurching its way up a steep incline, those eyes opened.

“Kara?”

Kara peered down at him. “Jeremiah. Are you in pain? Can I--"

“Can you understand me?” He was whispering in broken Estonian, “This is the best I can do. I don’t want him to understand.”

Kara nodded and lowered her voice, “Where are they taking us?”

Jeremiah shook his head impatiently, continued to speak in a mix of Estonian and Russian. “They’re going to separate us soon, so just…listen. You’ve got abilities. You know that, don’t you?”

Kara remembered how she’d snapped the bones in Doctor Luthor’s hand and tossed him aside like a rag, how when Astra had freed her, she’d covered her body with her own and pushed through a wall of flame into the fresh air outside. She knew that like the memories dislodged by the images onscreen, that there was something inside her, something that would emerge when she was in danger.

She nodded, “but I—"

“They haven’t manifested entirely,” he said. “But they will. And you’re a survivor, Kara.” He looked back at the guard who was peering out through a slot in the door as the truck took another stomach-churning lurch up the hill. “They can’t keep you, Kara. And more importantly, they won’t harm you. You’re too valuable to them. But you need to run. You run and you _don’t_ come back.”

He pushed himself forward, his voice gruff with pain and Kara saw it; he was working his arms, his wrists worrying a jagged snag in the wall left by a bullet. He must have been doing that for hours, pretending to be unconscious so that Kara wouldn’t accidentally reveal him.

“I’ll take care of him,” he whispered. “You- you go.”

Kara saw his arms loosen as the rope snapped, watched the relief wash over his face as he nodded for her to conceal him with her body. She scooted in front of him, and Jeremiah began to loosen her bonds. Kara closed her eyes in relief as the pressure eased and she felt the numbness in her hands dissolve, but the guard saw them. He raised his gun as Jeremiah leaped to his feet.

“You must be very stupid!” the guard said, stepping forward as the truck swayed and sent him careening into the wall. The fallen rifle swung at his side as he tried to steady himself. With one smooth action, Jeremiah pulled the still bound Kara to her feet and shoved her toward the door. Then he lunged for the guard.

“Go!”

Jeremiah rushed forward and the hull slammed loudly with the weight of the two men’s bodies as Kara scrambled to the door and raising her foot, gave a hard kick to the latch. Nothing.

She heard the thump of their bodies, the guard cursing in Russian and the sound of a fist against skin and bone.

“Don’t come looking for me, or Alex or Eliza!” Jeremiah said, “They’ll be safer if you don’t. You’ll be safer. And if you don’t make it, this won’t have been worth anything to any of us!”

Kara looked back, saw the guard looming over her adoptive father, raising his rifle, poising the butt over his head as he turned to face her. Time slowed as Jeremiah’s eyes met hers, urging her to flee. Then he said, in a blood-slurred stammer of her language, as if he had painstakingly remembered the words, “Go, Kara Zor-El. Find yourself and your people. And then, when and if you’re ready, forgive us.”

Kara looked away and closed her eyes, hot rage filling her as she kicked the door again. Hard. This time, she felt no resistance. Instead, there was a loud crack as the door crumpled and fell into the blackness. Outside was darkness and wind, nothing but a line of soil and stone that bounced and juddered as the truck picked up speed. Kara saw it, slowed the motion in her mind, and then she put her fate into the hands of gravity and tumbled out of the truck.

She cried out as bare knees and palms hit the gravel. The road was scattered with sharp stones, and she could see nothing as she rose but a wall of rock to one side and the edge of the road to the other. Beyond that was more darkness and the jagged edge of a distant tree line silhouetted against the stars. Kara edged closer to the expanse, catching a trickle of light at the bottom, a thin, winding ribbon of a river far below. There was no place to go but the road.

She ran, stumbling down that narrow slope, working the wrists that were still bound behind her as the wind fought her every step of the way. The truck continued its clumsy, precarious rise up the face of the mountain. She would be far away soon, safe. She would find a place to hide and free herself from the ropes. But as she ran, she saw it, the flash of headlights. Another truck was rounding the corner.

 _Of course, there are more,_ she thought. _Of course!_

As the lights grew closer, threatening to envelop her in their brightness, she had one choice. The edge.

She stepped toward the drop-off, saw the shadowy outline of stones and brush. If she could climb down, find purchase on an outcropping, the branch of a tree until they…

The light enveloped her and she stepped off, stumbled headfirst into the abyss, crying out as her body slammed against stone and mud. She tumbled downward, gaining speed with her fall.

And then, there was nothing. Nothing but the cool wind buffering her skin.

She fell, her body turning as that thin flicker of a river rose up, went from glimmering strand to a brushstroke, and from brushstroke to churning rapids. Kara screamed for god, for Rao, as she closed her eyes and braced for impact.

And then there was softness. Near silence, the wind no longer buffering her, but whistling past as her own voice echoed back to her. She clenched her jaw, her eyes still closed as she listened to the rushing water.

_Still below her._

Close enough to smell, to feel the spray against her skin. 

“Rao,” she whispered.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, saw the white foam of the rapids just a few feet from her face. “Oh…” she felt a laugh escape her, swallowed that laugh as she dropped once more, this time halting inches from the surface of the water. She could almost jab out her tongue and drink.

“Not yet,” she breathed. “Not yet…” She began wriggling at the rope behind her, working it until it slipped around one wrist, edged around her fingers. She flexed her hand, pushing it against the small of her back, nudging the rope off. She was speaking to the water now—who else was there to speak to, to blame for this fortune—coaxing it. “Just give me a minute, so I can swim in you.”

She freed her wrist and tugged the rope from her other hand, heard the light splash as the rope hit the water. “Okay. It’s okay now. You can drop me” she breathed, half-joking, still disbelieving as she dipped into the river’s gentle embrace.

She remembered waiting out that night by a fire she’d built in a thick glade of trees. And then, once more burdened by the earth, she started walking.

“Ground beneath my feet,” she whispered, urging herself onward, in the direction Astra had told her to follow if they were separated, using coordinates, long-memorized, encrypted in the meter and imagery of a poem.

IiI-IiI- IiI- 。IiI- IiI- 。。

  
_But there, alas, where the sky_  
shines with blue radiance,  
where olive-tree shadows lie  
on the waters glittering dance, _。_ __  
your beauty, your suffering,  
are lost in eternity.  
But the sweet kiss of our meeting …..  
I wait for it: you owe it me ....... 

IiI-IiI- IiI- 。IiI- IiI- 。。

She walked for days under cover of night, taking sustenance from the forest as Astra, and later Jeremiah had taught her, but despite her almost constant hunger, she rarely weakened unless deprived of the sun. By day, she would climb high into the bough of a tree, obscured from below by the thick branches, exposing herself to the light fighting its way through the thick cover of clouds. As time passed and the weather warmed, she realized that it did more than provide heat. It fed and healed and strengthened her.

The outside world became a dreamscape, intruding via the occasional call of a hunter, or, increasingly, the squadrons of Tupolev aircraft buzzing overhead. Kara was too intent on her journey to see anything ominous in those formations; to her, they looked like hope and freedom, and she would watch them and think back to the river, to the surprise and elation that followed the panic of falling.

Since that night, she had hurled herself from trees, leaped from the rooves of Izbai, trying to find the air again, the miracle that had saved her that night. She had to get it back, to feel the air and the sky around her--to fly.

_Ground beneath my feet._

She would get that back, she promised herself. She would learn to stop and splinter gravity the way she had learned to stop and splinter time in the cinema.

But when she got closer to her destination and allowed herself to risk the villages, the people barely noticed her. They were hurried, their faces anxious and their ears glued to the loudspeakers, set up hastily in kiosks and dusky public squares. As usual, those broadcasts boasted and hissed reassurance while all around her, the human voices muttered rumors of coming calamity.

Kara remembered stumbling upon a wedding, lured by the music and the savory smell of roasted meat. An old woman, half-blind and drunk with a rare happiness, beckoned her to a table laden with fish pie and tarts. She passed Kara a mug of lingonberry spirits and Kara had sipped at it, gratefully enjoying the reprieve as her eyes lingered on a group of dancers. Then two men came up to the table, leaning low over it, their voices low and urgent. Kara suppressed the urge to flee. One of the men wore the sober grey attire of the politburo.

 _He does not know you_ , she thought. _He is here for the wedding._

He spoke to a man wearing a traditional _Chokha_ , a brother likely, his voice clipped and worried.

“The Germans _are_ at the door, Lev. At the door, at the shed, peering into the windows, leering at our wives, our daughters. Everything, _everything_ coming from the official channels is the opposite of the truth. And the General Secretary does nothing, only kills each new messenger who brings news of the movement along the borders. Say nothing, Lev. But prepare Misha, prepare the children.”

The next day, as the sun burned the dew from the forest, she found it: The dolmen relic Astra had spoken of, the stone structure half-sunk into a hillside that wound along a bend in the river. Erosion and weather had long since taken the olive trees, and the markings were obscured by moss, but to Kara, they stood out like those planes against the sky.

IiI-IiI- IiI- 。IiI- IiI- 。。

  
So she dug, her hands filthy with blood and mud until she felt the hard metal of a box. Inside were papers, German and Russian passports, blank travel permits and a roll of bills in various currencies. The passports had been made for herself and for Yulia and Non. They must have also escaped the facility then, but why hadn’t Astra told her?

And when Kara looked more closely at the photos in them, she leaned back against the rock face and cursed. She was staring into that old, fearful semblance of herself from the facility, the waif who’d lived most of her childhood underground and afraid.

 _Too late,_ she thought. _This is useless!_

But to Kara’s surprise, the more she stared, the more the image seemed to shift before her eyes, the lines bending to sharpen her face and shadow her eyes, lengthening the bones in her cheeks, her nose.

How was this possible? Was it her? Could she shift the pictures as she had in the cinema? But that had been her perception, not what had appeared on the screen.

She found it in a pouch at the bottom of the box, instructions along with a note addressed to the three children, encrypted in a mix of Cyrillic and her native alphabet. But it was Astra’s writing, that coiling graceful hand, of that, there could be no doubt.

_Made from the material of your world. There are likely many other ways to exploit it, but we are primitive and have only been able to discover one. Use it wisely._

Below were more lines from Pushkin, addressed to her.

_The hills of Georgia are covered by the night;_

_Ahead Aragva runs through stone,_

_My feeling's sad and light; my sorrow is bright;_

_My sorrow is full of you alone,_

_Go now, little one. And forgive us._

#

_Moscow 1963_

Neither the café nor the station merited a name. No. 53 was a drab stop far out on the Trotskaya line, an area of concrete high-rises and hoodlums who slouched menacingly around bus stops and shabby kiosks **;** better enforced, it was thought, with the brute fists of police than surveillance. Maggie and Vudvick would trek out there separately when they wanted privacy, coming together over weak tea and thin borscht in that dingy, smoke-filled room. It was a private joke as well. The first time Maggie had needed to confide in Vudvick about the deception of a fellow operative, he had walked into the café and looked about forlorn, asking, “where are all the women?” Maggie had almost bellowed with laughter and relief.

“I won’t confide in you _that_ far, my friend,” she had said.

Today she sat across from him, eyes closed, face resting in her hands as a forgotten cigarette burned to the filter in the cracked ashtray between them. Vudvick’s eyes followed the last curl of smoke as it dissipated in the fusty air.

“Luthor is that woman’s father,” she said. She reached over and traced her spoon around the rim of her tea glass.

“Long dead,” Vudvick said.

“Long dead,” she acknowledged. “But Luthor the younger works for the Kosmicheskaya programma.”

Vudvick’s eyebrows rose. He cleared his throat and gestured blithely to a tattered map of the Trotskaya line pinned above the door behind her. “Masha, I took you to that party as a favor. It was routine. A perk. To cheer you up.”

Maggie scowled. “Was it?”

Vudvick gave her a pained look, then raised his finger tracing a line from the 53 terminal back to Kievsky station.

“I know, I know, Pavel. Big leap, but listen. I thought the Order of the Cosmos was a front, Madame Blavatsky hokum brought up to date with a dash of poorly interpreted youth culture, but what if it’s less of a snow job than we think?”

Vudvick took a sip of tea and glanced longingly at the samizdat paperback of the Strugatsky brothers’ _Space Apprentice_. “ _You_ trusting anyone’s sincerity, particularly that of a priest. Now that is rare indeed.”

Maggie smacked her palm over the book and pulled it to her side of the table. “My story is better, Pavel. Hear me out.”

She knew in part that Vudvick was just toying with her. This was what he did when she had her head buried deep in a case. He drew her out with mocking questions and a feigned disinterest which angered her and forced her to sharpen her thoughts.

Vudvick nodded and lifted his glass to the light, grimacing when he saw a speck of something floating in the weak brown liquid. “This had better be good.”

Maggie shot him a glare and pulled out her briefcase, slapping some reproductions of the daguerreotypes she’d found on the table along with some files, all slatted with the black lines of redacted information. She pushed the photo of the young Luthor standing next to the onyx formation across the table, sliding her finger past the youthful figure into the blur behind him. It was a wall of stone stained by two dark shadows, which upon closer look were hollow, two mouths. “About the only thing of note in Balashova other than timber and fur, are the Orlov caves.”

“Of note to speleologists,” Vudvick said.

“And mineralogists. Leonid Kulik led an expedition there in the 1920s. Luthor went with him.”

“Masha,” Vudvick said.

Maggie held up her hand to silence him. “The same Leonid Kulik who led the expeditions to Tunguska, and no, I’m not going there, Pavel. Not yet. But do you know what the Orlov caves are _also_ known for?”

She placed another photo on the table, a distant view of the formation jutting against the twilight sky, a raised silhouette over the taiga. “It’s one of the oldest astronomical observatories in the world, older than Kokino in Macedonia, older than Stonehenge,” she leaned back, a slow, satisfied smile dimpling her cheeks, “or so Doctor Ionescu of the Lubyanka University tells me.”

Vudvick coughed uncomfortably. That was the job title Ionescu gave himself after he was imprisoned, only to be pardoned and then refused his old post at the Tomsk Research Institute in Siberia. He now worked as a window washer in Moscow, but Maggie had been resourceful enough to track him down.

She placed an illustration of constellations in the night sky, the same pattern in the star dome of Covillev’s old church **,** “And this is from our man Covillev’s forger, the view, the exact view from that very spot around this time of year. The Nansi called it _geihreh’sh-ehl_ , but funny thing, Ionescu says _geihreh’sh-ehl_ is a loan word, one of several that can’t be traced to any other language.”

Vudvick shrugged. “Do you dazzle the ladies with such talk?”

“Every time,” Maggie said, her voice dark, “and it _works_.”

He leaned forward, folding this thick fingers and pursed his lips. “How do all these fascinating stars align with the Luthor woman?" 

“You need to wait for dessert, my friend,” Maggie said, raising her two fingers to the café attendant. “I’ve got some contacts. A couple of boys from Romania. Radio hobbyists, scamps who like getting themselves into trouble.”

“That’s how you learned of the Nedelin accident,” Vudvick said, rolling his eyes. “I knew you had another back channel.”

“Several,” Maggie said. “These boys come to me when they need rations or cash. Have offered me some crazy stuff, recordings of dogs’ and turtles’ heartbeats, distress calls. Most of the time, I turn them down, give them a pack of smokes and send them on their way, but this time…” She shook her head as if relieved at a near miss, “they brought recordings of coordinates and crash landings.” She took a map from her briefcase and flattened it over the table: an aerial photo of Balashova and the surrounding taiga marked up with red ink. “Some of them are Kosma probes, but not all of them our boys.” She leaned back as the café attendant placed a chilled bottle of Russkaya between them along with two frosted shot glasses. She thanked him and began to pour. “So, you tell me, Pavel, am I aligning these stars correctly?”

Vudvick was silent, but there was something lighter in his perpetually deadpan expression, alive, like when he spoke of his time in Manhattan. Maggie slid the glass toward him, “You always temper my worst instincts, friend. Tell me, so I can at least drink away my sorrows if I’m wrong.”

Vudvick fingered the glass and then reached into his jacket to remove a pipe and a pouch of tobacco. She watched impatiently, holding her own glass to her lips as slowly, he thumbed some tobacco into the bowl and placed the bit between his lips. Then he lit it and took a long, thoughtful puff, coughing briefly before he spoke.

One word.

“Kansas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best imitation of Kryptonese with a combo of the Roman alphabet and Katakana punctuation. Ao3 doesn't support Krypton font. (;  
> Also, shout out to Thelxiope for the info on the space turtles, and to Worddancer for the Anastasia reference that provided a very useful frame.


	26. As He is Painted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

Kara had taken a portion of the money and the papers, stashing the remainder behind for Non and Yulia. She didn’t know what had become of them or why Astra hadn't told her of their fate, but she would not leave them without, especially Yulia to whom even the rigid confines of the facility had seemed terrifying. Yulia was still a child, but Non? He would survive if freed; Kara feared for those who encountered him.

Her confidence shored by the identity papers, Kara walked into the village and ordered a generous portion of pelmeni at a near-empty cafe. Its owner, a lanky man in an ink-stained shirt, stared at her from behind the counter, but she ignored him. Let him stare. Let them all make of her what they would. She felt a strange exhaustion suffusing both body and soul. It was June now and she'd been moving for almost a year, had regained security, at least on paper, to rejoin the world, but now that world was fracturing, and with that came even more fraught decisions. She sat in the corner, savoring the feel of chair beneath her, the sunlight warming her back as Nadezhda Obukhova’s ‘ _Oh You, Heart_ ’ trickled gently from the radio.

She did not know what had happened to Alex and Eliza or if the NKVD had come back for them. Jeremiah had told her to stay away, that if they were still alive, her continued absence was the only way to keep them safe. The thought of that loss, long shoved down, jabbed painfully at her heart. She needed a few minutes of rest, of bland silence and denial before she was forced once more to move.

Those minutes would be the last--for her and for Russia.

She didn’t notice when the music stopped; she’d been lured into a doze by the Obukhova's lilt, but then the radio bulletin sounded and she shot up, instantly recognizing the voice of Foreign Minister Molotov.

_Citizens of the Soviet Union! The Soviet Government and its head, Comrade Stalin, have authorized me to make the following statement: Today at 4 o'clock a.m., without any claims having been presented to the Soviet Union, without a declaration of war, German troops attacked our country…_

Kara glanced up at the café owner, now strolling blithely over to the radio to turn up the volume.  He turned and calmly met Kara’s eyes as they listened, his face expressionless.

“Is this…” Kara said, stopping herself as the owner lifted a finger to his lips to quiet her. Then he snatched a dust-caked bottle of Rakia and two glasses from the counter.

_Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others, killing and wounding over…_

Without a word, he brought the glasses over and placed them on the table in front of her. Kara forced herself to breathe. After years of lies, what came over the airwaves now was truth. 

Her father's voice came to her again.

_You shouldn't lie to her, Jor._

An image of molten fire cascading down on the spires of the city.

“Enjoy it,” the owner said wryly as he wiped down the bottle and corked it, pouring them both generous drams.  “It might be our last.”

Kara nodded in thanks and pulled a chair out for him. He took a seat across from her and they clinked their glasses. The apricot liquid burned in her throat as reality once again rearranged itself around her. A reality not in images but in the voice now filtering through the wireless.

_This unheard of attack upon our country is perfidy unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. The attack on our country was perpetrated despite the fact that a treaty of non-aggression…_

“You seem…lost,” the man said, peering at her. His attention had annoyed earlier, but now she sensed more curiosity and resignation than ill-will. She nodded.

“I am.” _In so many ways._

She could stay hidden. She could get lost in the Caucasus, or wander back across the steppe.

He leaned back and regarded her. “The Soviets don’t do well with difference. They impose their plans on us, try to make us like them, but the Germans are far worse.” He shook his head and poured Kara another dram. “Best be safe,” he said. “They’ll empty out this place quickly enough, if not the Germans then the Red Army. I’d go South, to the Black Sea. See if you can find passage.”

But Jeremiah’s words came back to her. _They won't hurt you, Kara. They can't._

Maybe the best way was as Astra had told Jeremiah, to hide in plain sight. And maybe, confronting danger was the only way to learn more of her past, of what she could do. Kara raised her glass to the man and shook her head.

"No," she said, "I'm going North, to the front."

 

_November 7 th, 1941_

Alex held fast to Maggie as they made their way through the streets. A fresh snow was falling, coating the vehicles and the soot-stained rooftops, the bright red banners unfurled under cover of night. Above them, the distant roar of fighter planes, deployed to protect the parade, broke over the din of the crowd as they circled the perimeter of the city. As she looked up at the flat and uniform white of the sky, Alex felt the storm was a sign, if not of hope, then at least the certainty of winter. That autumn had been a series of victories and setbacks, offering nothing decisive for either side, but the temperature was dropping, the Germans were still 30 kilometers away, and Stalin was throwing a parade.

It was rumored that even his closest confidants had thought the idea preposterous. Moscow's resources were thin as it was, and troops were being recalled from crucial positions at the front, stuffed in with the young whelps fresh from military academies to provide a show of strength in the face of German inevitability. Yet, Stalin had been adamant, pushing through the preparations and keeping the timing secret until the snowfall ensured that they would not be sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. Maggie thought the idea brilliant, and eager to take part in whatever capacity she could, had cajoled Alex to free her from the warm protection of the hospital.

“For that?” Alex said, “when it’s seven below?”

“When we’re down, we need a reminder of who we are,” Maggie said, pulling herself into a sitting position as she yanked away the blankets swaddling her legs, “who we _can_ be. Comrade Stalin is right.”

Alex thought of her father but said nothing to that last remark. Instead, she took a seat next to her, pressing her hand gently into the other woman’s chest.

“You’ll catch your death out there,” she said, but Maggie only smiled and pulled Alex closer, her lips near enough to capture. 

“I already have,” she said, that Georgian accent revealing itself with playful suggestion. “It’s time to leave the sick room, Danvers," and Alex, happy to have the day free, happy to have this woman all to herself, had smiled and closed the remaining distance between them.

Alex wasn’t ready to broach the topic of Maggie’s loyalties. The lieutenant’s upbraiding of the NKVD captain had been enough to reassure her that she was more than capable of thinking for herself on those matters. But the remark about Comrade Stalin stayed with her, quietly buried beneath her chest much like the ash and shrapnel now hidden beneath the fresh coat of winter.

 _We’ve enough intruding on us,_ she told herself. More might shift things, might alter that tender and tenuous bond that was growing between them.

When they reached the top of the stairs of Plasky cathedral, a place Alex had chosen because it afforded them a broad view of the Lenin Mausoleum, she took Maggie to the carpeted threshold, attempting to seat her in the shelter of the entrance. Maggie stopped, her weight suddenly resistant. 

“What are you doing?” she said.

Alex turned. "I'm making a space for you," she said, "to sit." She reached into her rucksack and removed a blanket. "You'll be more comfortable."

“This isn’t a picnic,” Maggie said.

Alex straightened, her cheeks going as pale as the slate sky. “But your leg.”

Maggie shook her head and leaning on the crutch, made her way back to the edge of the stairs. “It’s disrespectful,” she said, and Alex saw that her expression had darkened. She wasn't looking at Alex now. She was standing, rigidly as if at attention, her eyes focused on the balcony from which the General Secretary would soon address the city.

“Oh…” Alex felt the air leave her, “I’m sorry, I…”

Maggie still said nothing, didn't even look back. Alex took the blanket and went to wrap it around her shoulders, allowing the sight of the crowd distract her momentarily from the upset.

Below them, thousands of soldiers fanned out across the square, saluting banners rippling bright and colorful in the dizzy blur of wind and snow. They stood in formation, as still as pieces on a chessboard while the trumpets blared a martial tune. It was troubling and awe-inspiring at the same time, and for a brief instant Alex forgot the cold, forgot the rift that in mere seconds had come between herself and Maggie. Then the music stopped and the General Secretary began to speak.

“On behalf of the Soviet Government and our Bolshevik Party, I am greeting you and congratulating you on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution…”

He was like an ant, Alex thought. Not only from the distance but his stature next to the others who shared the stage made him seem small and petty. Even his voice was weak as he railed about "the collective and the workers" and "the German brigands" who threatened the women and the children. But she stood there, holding the blanket, afraid to move, afraid that Maggie might intimate a lack of loyalty in any sign of distraction. Then she stopped herself, remembered Jeremiah's defiance of the NKVD and felt an old anger stirring inside her. Stalin had taken her father. He'd taken her sister, and his stupidity in the face of German aggression had likely lost her irrevocably to her mother. Why was she allowing these schoolgirl feelings for a woman—a woman she did not even know, not really-- to supersede that anger? Why was she allowing herself to grow as cowed and suppliant as the villagers in Trenevosk who’d turned denouncing one another into sport? Perhaps Eliza had been right. Marriage was practical, a thing to build on, but love was not. Love interrupted. Disturbed. Took you away from who you really were.

_Smash the invading hordes of German fascists…_

Alex closed her eyes and breathed deeply, the cold burning the back of her throat. Then she opened her eyes and turned. 

And melted at those dark eyes now gazing into her own.

_The enemy is not so strong as some frightened little intellectuals picture him._

Maggie wasn’t watching the speech. She was staring at Alex with a mix of regret and fear and tenderness, and Alex felt her heart fall into the snow, felt the heat of that anger evaporate.

"Masha," she whispered.

Maggie offered a faint smile and lifted her hand. “Come here, Alesha,” she said. “I want to see this _with_ you,” and Alex felt the cold dissipate, felt the tension fade as she stepped over to take Maggie’s hand.

_The devil is not so terrible as he is painted._

Maggie wrapped her arms around Alex's waist, nestling her chin on her shoulder. “I'm a fool and I’m sorry,” she said, her teeth chattering. “You see those men and women down there? This isn’t a festive reprieve for them. They’re marching right past us and on to the front. I should be there.”

“Don’t,” Alex said, hearing her voice crack, feeling a well erupt inside of her. Maggie would heal soon, she’d be sent off to the front once more. She clasped Maggie’s hands and pressed them to her core. “Don’t you dare ruin this,” she said, “not _this_.”

Then Alex turned and kissed her, in the snow, on the steps as the tide of the Red Army marched off to war below them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The speeches are from both Molotov's announcement of the German offensive on June 22nd, 1941, and Stalin's speech to the army on November 7th. Plasky Cathedral is entirely made up, but I needed to separate the ladies from the crowd.


	27. The Stars are Lit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter jumps around in time a bit, but I felt that scene breaks were a clumsier alternative. I hope the other cues work and thank you for reading.

 

 

All her life, she’d been looking up, from the bottom of that cold grey facility, to the luminous screen in the cinema, the stars in the night sky. That vast darkness had never stopped tugging at her, drawing her away from earth as to a mother’s embrace.

 _If the stars are lit,_ Mayakovski wrote, _it means there is someone who needs them._

Kara needed them. But now as she looked through the porthole to the black, to that blue orb floating so tranquilly below, she felt weighted down. Certainly, Alex and Eliza had long been like stones in her pockets, but even they’d grown lighter as her ambitions carried her closer to her goal. But now there was another, and Kara felt,  even as she swayed in the glow of the sensor lights, as if she were made of lead, tethered to the earth by the very woman whose genius had helped free her of it.

 _Lena_.

She subvocalized the name, almost afraid that by saying it, it would float from her lips, go careening gently through the craft like a wayward glove or strand of hair. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them to see tears, now limpid circles in the air in front of her. She reached out and felt the cold sting of them in her hand.

_Lena, I lied to you._

The COM crackled behind her and she turned, hoping she hadn’t been seen. Soviet Mission Control, or TsUP, was feeding up a list of checks, confirming them against Borodin’s observations.

“Troika, this is Samovar. Our preliminary data indicates a good cut-off. We'll have some more trajectory data for you in about half an hour. Over.” 

“Copy that, Samovar. All is well,” Borodin said. “Waiting on your numbers. Over.”

 “That's a beautiful picture. Clarity is excellent.” 

“It is indeed, Comrades, and all thanks to the General Secretary and your tireless efforts,” Borodin said, “Elapsed time, 4 hours 18 minutes. We will make the drop point in twenty-two hours.”

“It’s a glorious day over the Maldives, Comrades!”

Monelev was leaning over Borodin, floating horizontally, knees bent in the cramped crew cabin. The man was exuberant, turning this way and that, and for the first time, Kara couldn’t fault him. _She_ should have been feeling this way. She turned and pushed herself away from the crew module toward the aft. The twenty-two hours no longer offered a light at the end of a long journey but a decision she was not certain she could make.

She floated to the cargo bay, a narrow room of cabinets crammed with food and tools and tubing. In a spare space, jammed between the First Aid kit and a monitor was a small device Schott had had placed on board as a component for the Argon computer. What it was, he’d told her—that night she’d confessed the truth, that the mission wasn’t what they thought it was, that she’d had another level of clearance than the rest of them—was a recording device, intended as a means to leave a record of the data from the mission. “A new way to record sound,” he said, “up to ten minutes. They won’t be able to play it. They’ll see it as piece of motherboard, but it’s a memory card. I’ll see it gets to the right people.”

He’d smiled and patted her shoulder.

“Why are you doing this?” she’d asked, and Schott had widened his eyes in mock astonishment. “To see if it works, of course. Plus, I’ll be a damned fool if I let this get out to _this_ government. They’d put these everywhere, would be listening in on our bowel movements in no time.”

This was selfish, and she’d need to do this quickly, in the part of the craft where she would not be heard. Leave enough space to record the numbers that came in when they reached the rendezvous point

She switched it on and cleared her throat, watching as the small green light flickered in response to the sound. Then, in a slow and measured tone she began.

_Lena, I do not have much time, but I wanted to speak to you, to let you know why._

_I knew you’d been sent to watch me. You’d always been so standoffish. The ice queen they called you: cold, precise, and focused on results. Like your father. I suppose it will be a shock to you that I knew him, but in a funny way, it makes me feel closer to you. You and I were already like family, for your father raised me, too._

_When you came to my rescue outside the isolation chamber, I was intrigued at first. Mostly, I was amused. But that first day in your Izba, that awkward conversation, the way you looked at me told me that you weren’t aware of my real past._

_Oh, Lena, you had no idea._

She was turned down twice when she’d tried to enlist.

The male recruiter said she was “too pretty,” told her to go home and get married. “Give the boy something to fight for, eh?”

The female officer with whom she thought she’d have more luck, shook her head. “You look like a smart girl. Go back to school. Make something of yourself before the war ends and you’re married off.”

But by September, the Germans had extended their territory to the Dnieper and the thousands of wounded soldiers and civilian evacuees had rendered all excuses moot. Kara was tossed into an auxiliary unit at first, digging ditches and piling sandbags, working as a sapper on irrigation projects and hastily built generators. In those rare moments of rest, she thought about Eliza and Alex, wondering if they’d made it out of Trenevosk on time, or if the NKVD had come for them first. They might be safer in a gulag, she thought, and the dark absurdity of that notion made her sick.

So she worked. Tirelessly. Her commanding officers remarking on her inexhaustibility and strength, the other girls growing resentful of her example.

“She’s like that girl on the posters,” Kara heard one of them whisper. “Holding up that sickle like she’s running her own collective.”

“Thinks she does, anyhow.”

They started leaving her out at first, of conversations, jokes—not that she had tried much to participate. Sometimes, Kara would come to the mess tent and find her teacup missing, her portion of the rations tossed in the dirt, but she said nothing. Didn’t allow herself to anger. It wasn't that people left you out that hurt. You could survive on your own if your mind was active and curious. But it was the pleasure they took in doing so. Your pain validated their intimacy, shored them up and made their bonds stronger. In rejecting you, they could still make use of you. A microcosm of what the Germans, and on a smaller scale, Stalin, did to the Jews and homosexuals, to anyone who was different.

But by now Kara knew that her difference was her strength, one she was only just discovering. She was much more immune to the ostracism than Alex, for whom those last weeks before she and Jeremiah were taken, had been particularly hard. By that time, Alex wasn’t going out at all. Not even to school. She stayed in her room, holed up with her books and dreaming of the day she could go to the university in Moscow. Her boyish tendencies, once celebrated by the village children, had been turned against her in the tide of adolescence. That Vika girl had been talking, insinuating things that Alex herself could not understand, could not see because she did not recognize them. Eliza hadn’t noticed. In fact, she’d been delighted to have her daughter focus so resolutely on her studies. She’d started her medical training then, put her to work with her lab partner, a rakish young man named Dmitri.

Kara did.

She’d seen it in how the Countess Geschwitz clung to Louise Brooks in _Diary of a Lost Girl_ , in the dancers in Nazimova’s _Salome_ , both banned works that the theater owner screened in quiet defiance of Stalin. And although she knew Alex did not have words for it, she had a strong sense that on her world, it had not been taboo.

When Kara had asked one night why Stalin had recriminalized homosexuality, Eliza had answered with all the honesty of the obliviously good-hearted.

“To be a bastard. That was never what Lenin wanted. He let them serve in government. We were all to take a role in the new society.”

“Them?” Kara said.

Eliza looked at her curiously and then caught herself. “You’re absolutely right, Kara. That wording. It’s what Hitler and Stalin would like, setting people apart like that. It’s…thank you. But let me ask you. Why are you so curious about that. Is there someone at school?”

Kara glanced up and saw Alex standing on the stairway, her body stiff, her hands tightly gripping the thick spine of an anatomy book.

She shook her head. “I’m just curious,” Kara said. “This country has so many different people in it. I want to learn about them all.”

 

It was October when Kara walked into the mess tent and found a goat turd in her tin. She’d been up all night, helping to drag artillery guns through the mud and digging traps and anti-tank trenches. She had volunteered, said she was happy to go alone despite the leave promised to her unit. But Irina Irinovna, a sullen, resentful girl who fancied herself a leader made a stink, insisting that Kara was just trying to show the rest of them up.

“She’s not happy with us grunts,” she said. “Thinks she’s special. Let’s show her that she isn’t.”

So they’d gone, had spent the night in the rain, mostly not working. Instead, they preened in front of the men, complaining of the cold and the rain, making snide comments at Kara as she carried lumber and helped loosen boulders from the mud. She had merely kept working, and the next morning, their reward was simply more fury and exhaustion.

Kara came in after an hour’s sleep, her eyes bright and her clothes still damp and cold from the night before, to find the girls huddled around the mess table, shivering and sluggish, but not enough to keep from laughing as Kara glanced down at that frozen lump of excrement in her tin.

Again, she didn’t let herself get angry. She felt the stirrings of hunger certainly, but not anger. She stared at it, noting that the frost had rendered it odorless and inoffensive. In summer, there would have been reek and flies, but this was a lump of clay—the equivalent of a child’s mud pie.

Slowly, without glancing back at the others, she picked up the cup and walked over to the opening of the tent, tossing out the contents. Then she went back to the samovar, and drawing the hot water, began washing the tin, her expression serene. When she went she went to pour another cup of tea, Irina blocked her.

“You must like the taste of shit,” she said.

“Much better than I enjoy looking at it,” Kara said, instantly regretting the cut. The girl was sad, pathetic even, and it would not do to make her feel worse.

The others laughed, nervously this time, and delirious from lack of sleep, Irina shoved Kara against the table. Kara didn’t budge. The samovar teetered, dripping hot water from the faucet over the wooden table. Steam rose from the darkened wood, misting the cold air around them.

“Comrade,” Kara said. She tilted her head and gave the girl her most angelic smile, “do not strain yourself. Our energies are needed for the enemy.”

Her voice was calm, even warm, which angered Irina even more. “You! You think you’re so special.”

“No,” Kara said, “I do not.”

Irina raised her hand and without thinking, with a speed that sent the room to gasping, Kara caught the girl’s fist in her palm. She held it there, firmly, but careful not to cause pain.

“Please, Irina, go and rest.” She looked about the room, at the other girls who were staring up at her with a mix of fear and anticipation. “All of you. It’s going to get colder. The work will be long tonight.”

“You’re not our leader,” one of the girls said.

“No,” said a voice, “but I am.”

All eyes in the room turned to Captain Ekaterina Aaronov. She nodded to Kara’s cup.

“There is better in my tent,” she said, “I think you’ve earned it. Come. As for you Private Irinovna, you’re on latrine duty until I say otherwise.”

Aaronov’s tent was small and well-kept. Soviet officers were fastidious about maintaining their bunkers and the other temporary living quarters to which they were assigned. It had become a mark of character and often the soldiers put great stock in whether an officer's digs were clean and even welcoming, seeing them as signs of trustworthiness or resignation. Aaronov's were simple: a table, piled with the requisite maps and documentation, behind which was a small shelf lined with books. A copy of Tolstoy’s _Resurrection_ , Turgenev’s _Notes from a Hunter’s Diary_. There was nothing that might be considered womanly or feminine. Perhaps she was trying to stave off criticism from her brothers in arms. At the edge of the table was a photo of two children in the white shirts and scarves of the Young Pioneers. She stepped over to her samovar and placed a glass under the spout. “As promised,” she said. “You may be at your ease. Do you take jam?” She gestured to a wooden folding chair. “Please.”

Kara nodded, breathing in the earthy scent of the leaves. Aaronov must have had good connections to get tea of that quality. The smell alone was enough to wake her.

Kara accepted the tea as she sat down, relishing its warmth and fragrance. Aaronov took a seat opposite and did not mince words.

“You’re not afraid of much, are you?”

Kara answered with a slight shrug and a hearty pull, ignoring the sting of the hot water. Despite the rain and the chill, she felt absolutely parched.

“I was,” she said, wiping her mouth. “In the beginning. But something happens to you, you know? That first time you’re shelled or hear a bomb explode close enough to set your ears to ringing. When that initial fear subsides, you realize it’s best to keep moving, to keep working.”

She was lying in part, for she knew deep down that Jeremiah’s words were true. Although her instincts told her to flinch, to duck at the sound of a blast, it was likely that she could not be hurt.

Aaronov nodded and said almost dismissively. “Then your strengths are being wasted here.”

Kara caught Aaronov’s cold gaze and felt her heart drop. The way she’d said it; was this also a ruse, a way to lure her into a false sense of security? Perhaps Aaronov thought Kara was ruining the morale of her unit.

“If it’s about the others,” Kara said, placing the tea down on the table, “I did not mean to—”

Aaronov lifted her hand. “Those girls are sows,” she said. “Wouldn’t know a day of hard work if it fell on them. When the Germans reach this place, they’ll either scatter away from the frontlines or go rushing to Fritz like whores.”

Kara opened her mouth in protest. She didn’t care for their treatment of her, but such words weren’t called for. “If I may speak freely, Captain.”

“You may.”

“You need to have confidence in them. They’re insecure. Afraid. And they have the men on our end to deal with as well.”

Aaronov leaned back and gave a once around to the tent. “So have we all, Private. And we can’t allow fear. In any form. Fear is for campfire tales. In peacetime. Besides, they’re certainly not why I brought you here, so let’s get down to it, shall we? Major Raskova is recruiting for a new unit. She wants women of exceptional bravery and nerves of steel.”

“Major Raskova,” Kara said, her mind was racing. Raskova was a true hero, even before the war—the Russian Amelia Earhart who’d set countless long-distance flight records. “That's an—”

 Aaronov nodded before she could continue. “--an air force unit.”

“But I can’t...fly,” Kara said.

“They’ll train you,” Aaronov said. “Temperament and precision are paramount and you have both in abundance. Besides, you won’t be flying anything complicated. No fighter planes or bombers. You’ll go up in Polikarpovs. Biplanes made from wood and canvass, as light as a starling’s tail feather. So, are you interested or would you prefer to continue digging ditches and drinking shit?”

Kara nodded, feeling herself tear up.  Aaronov didn’t look at her.

“Don’t cry or I’ll change my mind. Now get your things. I’ve recommended you and one other girl. Kortni from the mess. Pick up’s at 13:00 hours.”

_I acted open and trusting with you, to disarm you at first. But after a while, it was so hard to do that, because you, Lena, were responding to my trust, your eyes reflected back that open and tender-hearted girl I pretended to be. And soon, much sooner than I ever could have expected, I started to feel that in myself, felt my heart open like the buds of a flower after the first snowmelt.  
_

**U.S. Newsreel Footage, 1947**

**_…And that was how the Red Army’s Lady Ace began her glorious career in the 588th. How she flew a total of 2,300 sorties into enemy territory, aided in the battle over the Crimea, and helped liberate Warsaw from the Axis. She has no name. Only her beauty and her deeds to commend her—The Lady Ace, the Red Comet, the Girl of Steel!_ **

Shots of women pilots lined up in a field and saluting. An aerial dogfight. Guns, rat-a-tatting. A bomb dropping from the front of a biplane. An explosion. A decimated German tank.

**_There are no Stalinist monuments to her bravery, not even a cross to mark the crash site in that godless nation, but ladies and gentlemen, here in America, we will pay tribute to our brave sister even if the Communist menace has turned its back on her. So here’s to you, a hero to both Soviet Union and Allied Powers alike! And if I may say so myself, one heck of a gal!_ **

                                                            

That was how she spent her nights, idling the engine low over the German encampments, gliding the bombs to the release point, as the Germans, their ears tilted to the sound of the wind whistling above, scattered below in terror.

It sounded like the whisk of a broomstick, the soldiers said. They called them witches. Night Witches. The perfect retort to the German cauldrons that encircled so many Soviet soldiers.

It was Kortni who dropped the bombs, sitting in the front of the craft while Kara piloted the plane. Sometimes when Kara saw them ignite below, she would get flashes of the past, of the fires that had driven her away. Often, the smell of gunpowder and smoke would fill her nostrils and she would get a brief flicker of that burning, blackened world from which she’d been torn away. And the more she saw it, the more consistency those images attained, making her even more certain that it wasn’t the long lost nightmare of a child, but something real—something terrible had happened. To her people. To her _world_.

Perhaps no one was waiting for her.

Two bombs for each mission—the planes were light—and there were eight, sometimes ten missions a night, but Kara delighted in the maneuverability of the plane, in the joy of flight even though she wasn’t doing it herself. She’d get there. She’d keep going higher and higher until she did.

She had gained a reputation though. People in her unit spoke of her, admiringly up front, but in frightened tones when she was out of earshot. And Kara realized that, no matter how far she stood from the others, she was rarely out of earshot. The more adrenalin that pumped through her system, the more danger she faced, the more heightened her senses became. She even thought she could hear the Germans, whispering in hushed tones far below. She would hone in on those voices and her target accuracy was unparalleled. So she was getting a reputation and people worried, the Germans were planning something, lying in wait to bring her down once and for all. Kara worried about Kortni, an affable, determined girl, whose life was in danger every time Kara swooped too low or turned the craft too close to a German gunner.

But in the sky, she grew bold. Reckless. She could not seem to help herself. And this was a war. One morning, just before the dawn light came over the horizon, they were set upon by Messerschmitts that strafed the plane with bullets, riddling it with holes. Kortni cried out and gripped her shoulder. She slumped forward into her seat just as Kara dipped low, stalling the plane beneath the tree line, barely limping back over the front line to crash in a field.

They were already waiting for her.

A line of NKVD men, binoculars in hand, boots polished and uniforms pressed as if they’d come straight from the Kremlin.  They hurried toward the bent craft, into the cloud of smoke that whistled from the engine. Kara was leaning over into the front of the plane, gently trying to move Kortni, whose shoulder was bleeding profusely.

She saw them coming for her and felt a rage torque up inside of her. “Now. You picked now,” she spat.

Kortni cried out and Kara winced. “I’m sorry. We need to get you out of here or you’ll lose too much blood.”

She turned toward the approaching men. “Don’t just stand there then! Help me! Then you can get onto whatever it is!”

To her surprise, the men did exactly that. One of them even saluted Kara awkwardly before helping her from the plane. The others reached up and gently hoisted Kortni to the ground. The girl was shivering now, the hypothermia and blood loss taking their toll.

“Get her to the medic,” Kara said. “Tent’s on the other side of that clearing.”

The NKVD man nodded, removed his belt, tying off Kortni’s arm. “That was quite a sight, Comrade Starikov,” he said.

“You heard her, Comrade Janacek. Go or we’ll lose the girl.”

The voice was officious yet silvery. Kara looked up to see a woman with an icy gaze and the well-tailored suit of an upper party official. She bore a cool smile bordering on a smirk. A Parisian scarf curled decadently around a long pale neck. 

Kara removed her goggles and examined the woman’s features. There was no doubt. She had seen that face as a child, softened by youth and the black and white shadows of the photograph. A beauty Kara had thought then, a beauty now marked by arrogance and ambition.

“Kara? I’ll see you there, Kara.” It was Kortni, calling out to her as the men carried her away, but Kara could barely hear her over the sound of her own heartbeat and the cool and steady thrum of the woman’s. She looked back and saw the girl bobbing in the man’s arms as they hurried across the field.

“She’ll be safe,” the woman said, “they’ll see to it.”

“I know,” Kara said.

“You had quite a night,” she said. She reached out her hand to Kara who stopped in front her. She remained motionless, staring into the woman’s eyes, feeling herself plunge back into a past filled with fear and uncertainty. They’d done it. They ’d found her.  The woman dropped her hand lightly to her side and smiled, more congenially this time.  She nodded for the remaining men to back off.

“To the canteen, comrades,” she said. “The girl and I have business.” Then she took Kara’s shoulder and turned her back in the direction of the plane. “Let’s walk, shall we? The sun’s coming up. I’d like to see it.”

Kara nodded and they walked in a heavy but almost companionable silence until there was enough distance between them and the others.

“You’ve nothing to worry about, you know,” the woman said, her voice still low. “He’s gone. I’m not here to take you back. I dare say I wouldn’t try at this point.” She let out a laugh that was met with more silence. “Clearly keeping you in captivity hasn’t been as much as a benefit as freeing you. I’d be encouraging you to fight against our interests.”

“Then why _are_ you here?” Kara said, and for the first time in years, she heard her voice shaking. She wanted to push her away, to run and hop back into that damaged plane, fly right into the German front lines if she must.

The woman gave her shoulder a squeeze, maintaining the pressure for a long minute before speaking. “I’m here because I’ve got an offer for you.”

She stopped and nodded over at Kara’s plane.

“You’re a daredevil, aren’t you? Arrogant, too. Bloody invincible from what my husband told me.”

“Your husband was a monster,” Kara spat. “I wonder if that’s in your blood as well.”

The woman threw back her head and laughed again, long and loud. When she’d calmed herself, she brushed away a tear and cleared her throat.

“He very well _might_ have been one, dear. Certainly acted like one at times, but as for me, you can call me Lillian, and you might want to start soon because I think this offer will appeal to you. Very, very much.”

Kara looked at her. “I doubt that…Lillian.”

“Let me put it to you as a question then,” the woman said. “You _like_ flying, don’t you? How about if I tell you there just might be a way to fly you _all_ the way home.”

 

_Lena, if I could tell you one thing—what we had last night was real._

_I didn’t expect to fall in love with you. And that’s what love is. Falling. The earth falls around the sun. The sun falls ever so gently toward the black.  
_

_In life, you choose either a steady orbit or uncertainty.  
_

_And when you almost told me, when that secret of yours was on the tip of your tongue, I chose the latter.  
_

_That is why I stopped you--from telling me._

_You and I might have been conscious players in this story to some degree, but in this, we were innocents. I wanted to share that with you. I wanted to keep that pure between us at least for one night._

_You are my pole star, Lena._

_Even now, among so, so many.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marina Raskova a badass pilot who suggested the idea of the women's airforce to Stalin. I've read conflicting information about the number of bombs carried by the Polikarpov U-2 biplanes. Some sources say two, others six, and probably there were different models. Kortni is a shoutout to the Bombshells version of Stargirl. In that universe, she and Kara Starikov are sisters and heroines of the Soviet Union.


	28. Judas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minor warning in the chapter notes and another time jumper. Thank you for reading.

**November 1963**

 “It’s me!  Emilia, stop it!”

Maggie backed away, breathing heavily. Her former lover-cum-cult recruiter was a shambles of her old self, her cheeks sallow, black half-moons under eyes both desperate and feral. She crouched in the corner of her cell, swiping at her with grimy fingers each time she attempted an approach.

“I know who _you_ are,” she said. “Fucking Judas!”

Maggie snorted. This wasn’t the first time she’d been leveled with that accusation. Emilia reached up and clawed at her own cheeks, at the cloth of a stained and tattered shirt. She'd been scratching at herself. Red streaks ran across every inch of her exposed skin.

“I would have been fine! I would have lived!”

Maggie turned back to Mikhail Davidoff, her contact in the MVP who’d summoned her less than an hour earlier.

Despite reforms, the relationship between the Soviet Militia and the KGB remained one of commensal and parasitic symbiosis. Ostensibly the former handled political dissidents, while the MVP took care of ‘ordinary’ criminals. A clear enough distinction. But the KGB liked muscling in on the latter’s long-worked cases, and, under Khrushchev, it wouldn’t do to arrest _everyone_ suspected of disloyalty. Why sometimes, you needed a trumped up case of public indecency or a viable case of embezzlement-- a handy window until you could get them to fess up to sabotage or treason.

This arrangement created an atmosphere of both resentment and backslapping, one that Maggie tried not to exploit. Instead, she worked with lower level contacts: administrators and fresh recruits on the beat. Maggie and Davidoff had a routine. He’d call her whenever a person of interest wound up in the drunk tank, give her a few minutes inside to ask questions while that person was still unguarded. Usually, they had a laugh over it. There was pleasure to be gained from seeing a gangster or party mucky muck, smelling like piss and mired in his own vomit. It gave her a better view of things, an easier means of pattern recognition. And in the past week, a definite pattern had been emerging.

On Tuesday, Yevgenia Markov, the young girl Maggie had seen take communion the day Arkov ran his sting operation had been transferred from Lefortovo prison to the hospital where she’d died within hours. As had another of Covillev’s disciples. Both of them for terminal illnesses that had, to that point, remained remarkably dormant.

Markov, she’d been informed, died of late-stage leukemia.  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” the physician told her. “Watched her go from the early stages to the end in the space of 72 hours."

The other had died from a wasting disease, a rare one that usually took years to claim its victims, and all of the patients had come from far outside of the capital.

She remembered Yevgenia during the initiation process. A sweet kid, but not too bright. She'd been raised by a grandmother after her parents had died. The grandmother was gone too. Spoke a lot about her hometown in Kazan, her plans to marry another member of the Church. His name was Yuri and he hung around her like some sad, sloppy retriever, plying her with food. Then he'd disappeared during the raid.

Now there was Emilia, who'd gone missing after she'd successfully 'seduced' Maggie into the cult. Maggie had put out a missing persons report and this time, when Davidoff called her in, he'd sounded more rattled than amused. “We think it’s narcotics. Patrol picked her up on Maelher St. Please, hurry down here.”

#

**One Week Earlier**

_“Code-named KANSAS,” Vudvick said. “Muscle for U.S. intelligence. He approached us in Manhattan, wanted out and offered to cross over. We helped him. Up to a point.” He downed his vodka and then dabbed at his lip with a handkerchief. “A confounding fellow.”_

_Maggie smiled inwardly. ‘Confounding’ was just the kind of word Vudvick would use; like the handkerchief, such small delicate touches were a way to contrast his size, the dull scowl that masked a formidable intellect. He glanced behind him and made a whirling motion with his finger to the matron. Cigarette dangling from her lips, the old woman placed a record on a polished turntable and lowered the needle. Johnny Hallyday’s_ _Nous les gars, nous les filles_ _crackled from the speakers, just loud enough to cloak their conversation._

_“KANSAS was their very own Rasputin. Only, you know,” Vudvick shrugged, “he smelled better.”_

_“Then the Feds were paying a guru?” Maggie snorted. The Americans sure liked their holy-rollers._

_“No.” Vudvick cleared his throat. “I mean that this man could not be killed. Not by bullets, or fire, or poison or…” He chuckled and his expression grew distant and disbelieving. “Wouldn’t tell it by looking at him. He was a cluck, a farm boy who’d signed up after Pearl Harbor. Said they’d discovered him during the war. He’d been one of those unfortunate POWs locked up in a ground zero cell in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped. In came the army, and there he was, surrounded by debris and the ashes of his fellow prisoners. Not a bloody scratch.”_

**#  
**

Maggie sat down and picked up the phone, blinking at the long list of names in the Ministry of Health directory. The Moscow hospital had none of these patients’ charts, and it would take weeks, months even to get their records transferred from various rural polyclinics, once she was able to track them down. She began dialing up the clinics in Kuibyshev, and by some miracle, found Yevgenia’s physician on the 23rd attempt. The connection was lousy, the receptionist sour-voiced and terse. 

“Doctor Nazimov's indisposed.”

Maggie smiled and let out a long sigh. “Well, if you just tell him that Lieutenant Magdalena Rodaski from the Committee for State Security is on the phone, I’m sure he’ll find time.”

There was a long pause and Maggie could hear the woman’s hand muffling the receiver, the clop of heavy shoes in a corridor.  A man, his voice as labored as his breath, answered. “How may I help you, Comrade?”

 “I’m calling to inform you about a former patient, Yevgenia Markov. She passed last night at Moscow General. “

Silence. _“Last night_?”

“Leukemia,” Maggie said. “You were aware of her condition?”

 Another silence. “Yevgenia Markov," the Doctor repeated, "of Shaposhnikov St. Daughter of Fyodor and Romana Markov. You say you have someone with her name who died last night.”

“That surprises you?”

“Lieutenant, Yevgenia Markov was in the final stages of the disease when I saw her last. That was two years ago."

“How bad was it."

 “What I said. Terminal,” the doctor said. “No chance of remission. If I remember correctly, her grandmother was arranging for a State hospice when she disappeared. We'd all assumed she'd killed herself. After the search, of course. Are you certain we're speaking of the same person?”

“I'd like to find out. Can you send me her records?" Maggie said. 

#

  _“And you believed that_ _?_ _” It was Maggie’s turn to play the skeptic. She settled into her chair and waited as the matron placed a plate of bread and cuts of salo on their table._

_“I didn’t say I believed him,” Vudvick said, refilling his glass. “He sounded like he could not quite believe it himself. Said before that, he could get hurt, that he would feel pain, even if he recovered faster than others. But now, he was invincible. Told me they brought him back stateside after the surrender, shot at him, hit him with hammers, burned him. Nothing.”_

_“You see any proof of that yourself?”_

_Vudvick_ smiled appreciatively and shook his head. “A few jokers held his hand to a lighter, but any drunken fool can withstand that.”

_He stifled a belch, then started to spread the bread with mustard. The smell burned in her throat._

_“He must have had something else to offer then. Why_ _did_ _they believe him?”_

_Vudvick_ placed the knife down on the table and wiped it neatly on a napkin. Then he pushed the plate toward her as if to say ‘chew on this for a spell because it’s going to take time,’ and Maggie took a piece, tore the bread and salted pork between her teeth as the mustard burned her nostrils. She washed it down with vodka. 

_“When we were vetting him, HQ sent us some encryptions on microfiche. Not like what we were used to. They were bizarre. Looked like a cross between hieroglyphics and Fortran. They asked him to translate them as proof. He did. In minutes_ _.”_

_“Find out what they meant?” The vodka warmed her instantly and she poured another shot. She was tired, she realized. A lot more than vodka was going to her head._

_“I don’t know,” Vudvick said. “But whatever it was satisfied them enough to put Lionel Luthor’s son on a plane to Idlewild.”_

_“Him.” Maggie nodded, biting her bottom lip. She’d read more than she’d wanted to about that Luthor while looking into his father. The little bastard had defected to the U.S. sometime before Vudvick lost his posting in the States. He was a spoiled but bright troublemaker endeared neither to the state nor his family, so it seemed. The official story was that he’d gotten rich off of stolen Soviet technology._

_“Why Lex?”_

_“KANSAS always wore this collar, if that was what you called it. Two, actually. Around his neck. The other around his wrist. He said he couldn’t remove them. If he did, they’d release a solution. Something that would kill him instantly. He claimed Luthor was the only one who could remove it without releasing the compound.”_

_“And did he?”_

_“He did,” Vudvick said. “And then he smashed them both out in the middle of the night. He disappeared and Luthor presented himself to the nearest police station. And we? We were sent home.” Vudvick poured another glass and downed it. “I do miss Katz’s.”_

_“Was it true?” Maggie asked, taking another pull of vodka. “About the restraints?”_

_“I don’t know,” Vudvick said. “Ivanovic was there when Luthor removed them. It took twenty-three hours and Luthor was a right bastard. Shouting, demanding takeout from Howard Johnson’s and Folgers coffee of all things!” He laughed.  “Ivanovic wanted to wear protective gear, at least a mask and gloves, but Lex just laughed at him. So did KANSAS. Said it wouldn’t harm_ _people_ _at all. I never learned what that meant, or what was in it, just that…” and with this Vudvick’s widened at the absurdity of the story he was telling. “He said it glowed, green, like a bloody leprechaun.”_

_**#** _

Maggie sighed and took a step back. She dropped her arms to her sides. “Emilia. We need to get you to a doctor. And you need to tell me whatever the fuck it is you’re on.” She leaned down and took Emilia’s face in her hands. She smelled like urine and something primally unpleasant. It smelled the way her cat had when Maggie'd come across his carcass under the floorboards of her childhood home.  “Where’d you go after we let you out? Who sold it to you?”

The woman leaned back and howled with laughter. The veins in her throat stood out like roots. “You are _so...fucking...thick_ , Masha.” She lurched up and grabbed her around the legs, biting hard into her calf. Maggie cursed and tried to push her away. “Don’t just stand there!”

She glared at Davidoff, at the medic now timidly circling them with a syringe. "Not that!" She swatted it from his hand. "You don't know how her system will respond. Want to kill her?"

Davidoff tried to pull her off, but Emilia clung fast, gnawing at Maggie’s leg like a dog as Maggie lifted her hand and smacked her hard across the face. Nothing.

“That’s it!” Maggie leaned down and got a grip on Emilia’s arm, yanking it up hard, pushing back until she heard that nauseating, telltale pop. Emilia dislodged her teeth and screamed, loud enough to spur her cellmates down the corridor to shout back.

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Noisy witch!”

Still wincing from the pain in her leg, Maggie pushed Emilia onto her stomach and straddled her, pulling her hands behind her back and slipping the handcuffs around her wrists. Emilia whimpered, her face pressed into the concrete, spit and snot and a smudge of cheap mascara streaked the floor.

“I’m sorry to do this. It’s for your own good.”

She glanced up at the medic. “Let's get her out of here. The lady’s in pain.”

“It won't work,” Emilia slurred. “Don't you see? It's too late." She started to chant,  panting out the same verse even as her breath grew weaker. "A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.”

Maggie stood and backed away, one hand rubbing the bite on her leg. Emilia hadn’t drawn blood, but there'd be an indentation the size of a canyon there for weeks. Davidoff and the medic lifted Emilia to her feet, and she gazed at Maggie, her head drooping to the side like some grotesque ragdoll.

 “A healthy...It’s not going to matter, you know,” she said. “But I _was_ in love with you, Masha. I keep forgetting, you know? How love makes you stupid.”

 “Doesn’t it?” Maggie said. Then she released her once more into the care of the State.

**November 1941**

_She still remembered the parade. The banners. The soldiers forming a long grey line in the snow. She remembered Alex whisking her away, her laughter muffled by the snowfall, echoed by the stairwell as they climbed to that room she’d kept at the top floor of the hospital. It was more like a broom closet, really. But private, despite the draughty window that looked down on the street below._

_She remembered Alex had rushed things at first, taking a bottle of vodka from her back and passing it to her, clumsily, as if she were about to perform a simple, yet painful operation._

_“I still have two hours,” she’d said, and then she looked down, embarrassed by the eagerness in her voice._

_Maggie felt another pang of guilt for the spat she’d caused earlier, for that stubborn show of patriotism and wounded pride. So, she’d reached out. Reached out and took the bottle from Alex’s hands and set it aside on the window ledge. Then she entwined their fingers and drew her closer. Alex’s body resisted at first, out of awkwardness or timidity, but suddenly they were nose to nose, and those soft brown eyes rose and to meet her own._

_She spoke, her breath warm against Maggie’s mouth. “I’ve never…I mean, I don’t…”_

_Maggie reached up and pressed her finger to her lips._

_“It’s okay,” she whispered, “It’s okay.” And then she pulled Alex closer, one arm firmly sliding around her waist, the other hand entangled in her hair. They stood like that for a moment, swaying lightly as they listened to the snowflakes scatter against the window, their foreheads touching, eyes locked and searching. And Maggie didn’t tell her, didn’t tell her because it really didn’t matter. As their lips met, she felt Alex’s body go pliant, even as it shook from cold and excitement. She didn’t tell her because Alex was already working at the buttons of Maggie’s greatcoat and tugging it easily it from her shoulders, because this came as simply to Alex as it came to her.  Maggie kissed her nose, her cheeks, traced her lips over her neck until Alex pulled her back into a kiss, the warmth emanating from them rising._

_She didn’t tell her because Alex, this confused and sad and wonderful girl, needed her to be confident. Other than that brief and painful dalliance with Eliza, Maggie hadn’t been with anyone. She was more experienced with war perhaps, but not with women. That wouldn’t come until later. Until the magic of that darkening afternoon had long turned into pain and regret._

#

Emilia died en route to the hospital. Acute renal failure, they'd told her. Not an overdose. Not a trace of narcotics in her system. Maggie didn't know now, but her medical records from Irkutsk would confirm it. Waiting list for a kidney transplant since the age of fifteen. Long fucking list. Endless if you were from Irkutsk.

In her apartment, Maggie had drunk a toast to Emilia and tried to pour another. The bottle was empty. She tossed it to the floor and walked over to the cooler, opening it to find nothing but a cheap bottle of Aquavit. Flavored. A fling had left it behind months ago. A woman who wore too much of the makeup she nicked from the government store.

"Like cherry cough syrup," Maggie said, and then she planted herself on the floor and opened it, ran the bottle under her nose and laughed at that godawful florid scent. She grimaced and took a swig, and then she remembered, that look on Yevgenia Markov's face when she'd taken communion. She'd seemed beatific, but afraid, as if she knew it was something other than lowgrade Bulgarian wine.

 _You had it tested_ , she told herself, _for narcotics, for toxins. There was nothing._

But maybe she'd been testing for the wrong thing, and maybe it was more concentrated in the source.

Vudvick's story had been outlandish. But maybe there was something...some compound Covillev was giving them that, like his ghost operative, made them impervious to disease. It was absurd. And Covillev _had_ been hurt. Bondarev had seen to that. But clearly whatever had kept them alive was contingent on a supply, one that was limited. And maybe that was just how he wanted things. He'd keep the sick ones faithful. Dependent.

Emilia's words came back to her.

_A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit._

 

**Novosibirsk, Siberia  
**

_That light._ Alex leaned over the eyepiece of the microscope. It  _was_ real. She had seen it in the plants, in that stubborn vitality in the face of the winter. She’d seen it in the glow of Maria Ilyanovna’s skin and that of her newborn babe, in the life that had sprung back into Natalia Olishova’s step. She had thought she was projecting, placing her own relief onto her patients who against all odds were thriving.

But there it was, seeping into the cells of both plant and human, the blood samples she had taken from Maria Illyanovna and her baby son. Just as with the plants, whose cell walls were weakening, showing signs of decay despite outward signs of life, the membranes in boy’s cells were also being easily penetrated by the dye, by another light that clashed with the dye’s luminescence, permeating the damaged areas.

She sat back in her chair and let herself breathe, remembering a physics professor who’d said that 99.9 percent of the body, of everything, was comprised of empty space. She’d stopped listening soon after when he started pontificating about how the science vindicated Marxism, how it was the State that would fill that void in both man and machine. But Alex now saw a vision of these people. All of them, their very bodies being infiltrated, replaced by light, by shadows, and she thought of Kara, in the cinema all those years ago, terrified of that flicker on the screen. A line from Mandelstam came to her.

“Breath evaporates without a trace, but form no one can deface.” She snorted. _Got that wrong._

 “Mama?”

Alex started, turning to see Jami standing in the entrance. She breathed for a moment, hand over heart, as the girl laughed..

“Did you finish your lessons?”

Jami rolled her eyes and began to recite: “Black wings don’t dare to fly over our Motherland, over its spacious fields, the enemy doesn’t dare to trample.  _Trample_.” She squinted and tilted her head. “What a clumsy word to use in a song. Is that what you sang as a girl?”

Alex laughed. “I tried not to.”

They’d received a travel pass to Novosibirsk for the weekend. Jami had been going stir crazy in Balashova, tired of scrapping with the village kids, of subsisting on rations from the government store while the others enjoyed the bounty of the taiga. Lab access had been another reason. Alex’s old colleague from Leningrad, Viktor Krimov, had called in a favor at the Kursky Institute, allowing her access to the equipment she needed, the high voltage microscopes imported from Japan. Krimov hadn’t asked her why. He was good for that, and despite their past, he’d been the only one to come to her defense when she’d come under fire at the lab.

He’d been in love with her once, when Alex had briefly entertained the idea that the dissatisfaction she’d felt with Dmitri might have been a case of individuals. It hadn’t been. And, after a few awkward attempts with Krimov, he’d risen from the bed one morning and dressed. Then he’d made them both tea, waiting as it cooled, waiting for her to rise and come sit across from him in that small kitchenette. She remembered his exact words. 

 “I’d marry you in an instant, Alesha...if I thought I could make you happy.”

Alex had opened her mouth to protest, realizing that whatever stumbled out of her would make things so much worse.

 _But_ _it really isn’t so bad. Not with you, I mean. I do enjoy afterward...our talks._

Krimov pushed the cup of tea forward. “You’ve got this look on your face when we’re…together. I see it in the lab, too. Determined, sadly contemplative, like when you’re trying to replicate results that weren’t very promising to begin with.” 

He’d gestured back at the rumpled sheets and smiled, a forced, game smile that hid a swallow of defeat.

“I’m sorry, Vitya. ” Alex lifted a hand to placate him and felt his large fingers encircle her own. They were warm and comforting but nothing more.

  He looked away, his features softened by the dawn light.  “I’ve seen you looking at that photograph.”

“Of Dmitri?” Alex said, feeling a twinge of guilt over the surprise in her voice.

“The one in the book.” 

 _Maggie._ She kept it in a stat reference on her desk.One of the few photos she had of her. It had been taken after she’d made lieutenant. Alex hadn’t known her then. She remembered how impossible that had felt, for there to ever, ever have been a time when she hadn’t known her.

Maggie had given it to her that winter. 

That winter of stolen glances; of hands, lightly brushing in passing. That winter of smoke and cold and shrapnel, of death and the scream of fighter planes as they flew overheard. Of nights shivering together under piles of thin blankets and coats, under old carpets pilfered from the husks of bombed-out hotel rooms. 

Of dark eyes meeting her own across the rows of the wounded in their beds. Eyes that said “I’m here for you. Despite duty, despite the Germans, and Stalin, and the whispers of informants."

The words, however. The words had been different.

She’d been so happy. It was mystifying really how she had been so happy. Despite having no word from Eliza. No word on what had happened to her father or her sister. And Kara _was_ her sister. That was a truth she had become more reconciled to the longer they were apart. 

 She went rigid and Krimov released her hand. “I am sorry. You were out sick that day and I needed it for a reference. I hadn't meant to intrude on your privacy. It was when you came back, I’d see you pick it up, and you were always, always opening to that same page.”

Alex folded her arms and sank into herself. Outside, a snowplow dragged its way down the narrow street. Krimov’s voice seemed even more distant.

“My mother wasn’t happy with my father. It wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t hers. But I’ve seen the results of such unhappiness. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

Alex looked up at Krimov and felt herself shuddering, felt the cold sting of tears on her skin. The words came out involuntarily. “Oh god, Vitya, I love her so much.”

She felt the table tilt as he pushed himself up and came to her, crouching low and wrapping her into a gentle embrace. He stroked her hair as she leaned into him and sobbed. All those years, the secrets and confusion. The memories. They were who she was. Not the State. Not her career or the things she thought she desired. Thought she _should_ desire.

“Write to her, Alesha,” Krimov said. “Just try. My mother never did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Brief fallback into a het relationship. A brief one. 
> 
> Normally, I wouldn't explain myself, but I felt that Alex, due to the sheer loneliness and suppression of the late Stalinist period, might give in more than once to heteronormative pressure. I also felt that she needed an ally, both personally and professionally, and thus we have this scene in the kitchen. Our Alex came out into a more accepting world and time (if we don't count Putin and the Watchers on the Walls, and Chechnya. Fuck. Maybe not). This version isn't necessarily going to have the kind of clarity Alex experienced after Maggie.
> 
> Also, Jon Cryer is NOT the version of Lex in this. The great pink horror of it all! This Lex is Vladimir Vdovichenkov.


	29. Heredity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was rough. But things will get better. In time. Thanks for reading.

_Lanskov Institute, Leningrad 1953_

 Trouble came with Anatol Sheskov.

A whisper of a man in a tailored jacket, Sheskov seemed to be, if only by the virtue of the certainty with which he carried himself, a leader. A brilliant man who had his eyes set firmly on the future. Perhaps he even had been once, Alex thought, until survival instincts and a pliancy to ideology snuffed out all independence of thought. But people were drawn to the self-assured; responding to confidence much in the way ants, infected by some malevolent parasite, would climb toward the light into the waiting mouths of herd animals.

“From all of our previous results, comrades,” he said, running his fingers over a sickly stem of wheat, “this stock should be far more robust. We’ve been exposing each generation to higher temperatures, and yet here…” He held it up, grimacing comically as it sagged and broke apart like an overboiled noodle. “We have failure. I am at a loss. If anyone here might tender an explanation.”

 _Lysenkoism_ , Alex thought. _Dark age science_. On a promise to Victor, she was struggling to keep her mouth shut.

“He’s only in charge until the project is finished. And there’s talk,” Victor had told her. “Stalin is growing resentful of Lysenko’s influence.”

“But not his ideas,” Alex had said. “When will that happen? When next famine comes? When we’re begging China for their surplus?”

Lysenko eschewed Mendel in favor of Lamarck: Environmental changes generated survival needs, which then determined use and disuse, and thereby the manifestation or disappearance, of physical and mental characteristics. She remembered her father’s remark: how Lysenko thought a dog with its tail lopped off would give birth to tailless pups. By that logic, Alex should have been born with the ability to recreate Eliza’s kasha. Exciting developments were happening abroad. Even as the Academy of Sciences turned a blind eye, the Soviet scientists themselves were discussing them privately, sharing papers smuggled from Vienna, New York, and Japan. Alex wanted to delight in these discoveries, wanted to be a part of them, but the names Crick and Franklin only made her feel like she was mired even further in the past. She kept her eyes fixed on the blue ceramic tiles of the floor. Above them, the halogen lamps hissed and flickered as they bathed the room in a pallid light.

“The heat stress caused damage to the metabolic pathways, especially those relating to photosynthesis, Comrade.”

Alex raised her eyes as Rita Molozov, a slight woman with grey hair, finished her sentence. Molozov was timid and stooped, the result of a detainment during the Terror of ‘37. Was she challenging him?

Sheskov looked at her, encouragingly at first. “And?”

“This generation did not succeed not because you did not apply the right conditions, but because of the expression of..."

 _Say it_ , Alex thought.

Molozov paused, her voice almost a whisper. “...unseen components.”

Sheskov snorted. “Oh, Rita Mikhailovna. We’re not falling into superstition, are we? Next, you’ll be telling me that homunculi are hiding out in the soil.” He chuckled at his own joke. “We need to think like Soviets, not 14th-century peasants.”

Alex forced herself not to roll her eyes. Then she gave Krimov an apologetic shrug and steeled herself. “Comrade Sheskov,” she said, “what Comrade Molozov is trying to say is that our research has shown...time and time again that certain inborn traits, rather than exposure to certain elements have a better potential for developing heat resistant crops. What we’re doing is haphazard and roundabout, really. If we can map out these traits and breed strains accordingly then maybe we'll make some progress.”

Sheskov stared at her as if she’d just tossed a drink his face. She glanced at Krimov who gave a barely detectable nod of encouragement.

“And on what basis do you know that, Comrade Danvers?” Sheskov said.

“Research,” Alex held her head up. “Promising research.”

Sheskov nodded as if he was sincerely trying to digest her point, but then he lifted his hand to his chin and nodded slowly. “Ah, you see, that makes a lot of sense. Your father _was_ a proponent of Mendel, was he not? Loved his Darwin, too.”

Alex felt her stomach tighten. She’d known Sheskov was an ideologue certainly, but one more interested in abstractions than keeping tabs on his colleagues. But now, she saw he’d been doing so all along, waiting to drop the past on anyone who presented a challenge.

“My father has nothing to do with this,” she said.

“Oh?” Sheskov nodded, then turned away abruptly as if her answer was all the proof he needed. “Well, let’s continue with means of heat exposure, shall we? I’m sure we can see improvement.”

Alex glanced at Molozov who gave her a half smile in gratitude. The environment certainly did bend a person, you adapted in your one life as a means of survival, but it didn’t leave you stronger, only bent and stooped, your voice lost to the elements. But it was better to be stooped and bear scars than to bend and give in. She remembered the bonsai tree she’d seen Maggie admiring, in that German shop window near the end of the war.

“Do you see?” Maggie had said. “The beauty is in its resistance. They can cut away at its branches, constrain it, but still, it grows and flowers.”

_December 1941_

An hour together under the canopy of the snow-draped Khimki forest, they walked, hands ungloved, Maggie’s fingers offering a vein of warmth as they made their way from the encampment.

“Listen,” Maggie said.

Alex stopped, her heel sinking into a fresh drift of snow. She closed her eyes and leaned back, luxuriating in the softness of Maggie’s body as she pressed her from behind.

“Can you hear it?”

There was the trill of an arctic bunting nestled above, the soft thud of a clump of snow as it fell from a branch, the rustle of wind caressing her cheeks.

“It’s so quiet,” Alex said.

Maggie slid her arms around her waist, hands pressed low as she dipped her face into her neck. Alex felt the soft pressure of the smaller woman’s lips against her collar and let herself lean into her.

“Exactly,” Maggie said. Her breath was warm. “The first time in months we’ve not heard a plane or a tank or some drunken off-duty sentry singing _Katyusha_.”

It was true, Alex realized, they were enclosed in stillness, a pocket of time as delightful and unsettling as the promise of an uncertain future. Just a few days previous, the loudspeakers of the Commissars announced that the Wehrmacht had been driven back near Naro-Fomisk. The Germans forces were weak, running low on supplies and blindsided by the Russian winter. She’d heard of battalions frozen to death as they’d fled in their thin coats, the ice forming traps around their boots.

“You know?” Alex said, “maybe there isn’t a war out there at all.” She turned around, tucked her fingers beneath the flap of Maggie’s ushanka, freeing a lock of that soft raven hair. Maggie kissed her palm. Smiled.

“You going crazy on me, Danvers?”

Alex shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe we’ve just stepped in a fairy ring. Maybe we can stay here forever.”

“A fairy ring,” Maggie laughed and Alex laughed as well. She couldn’t believe she was saying these things. The old Alex would have given a lecture, gone on and on about how the mycelium worked from the center, forming a network of fungi that sprang up from the earth in a perfect circle. That was what she had told Kara during a hike just a few short years ago after the girl had suddenly become obsessed with mysticism and doorways into other worlds.

_Is it true they’ll take an eye, Alex? Is true they’re made by witches? That’s what Tatiana says. Her mother’s from Styria. She says that on Walpurgis Night they—_

Alex closed her eyes and pushed down the memory.

“Maggie…” She blinked into the rare shaft of sunlight that sliced a line across the clearing. She needed to say it before the spell was broken, before they returned to that grey landscape of smoke and loss. “Masha, I—”

“Comrade Lieutenant!”

It was a boy’s voice, cracked and urgent. They sprang apart, their eyes trained on a gangly figure stumbling toward them over the snow-covered boulders and tree stumps. It was the private from Maggie’s Battalion, the Ukrainian boy Alex had talked to when she’d gone looking for her at her barracks.

“Private Shtrum,” Maggie said, her voice laced with irritation. “What is it?” She didn’t see it, Alex realized, didn’t see the envelope clutched in his hand.

A pokhoronka—a burial notification.

“They said I could find you here,” he said. He held out the envelope and then bent to catch his breath, his face flushed from running.

Without glancing back, Maggie took the envelope, nostrils flaring as she slotted her finger through the lip and tore it open. Alex placed a trembling hand on her shoulder as she watched those dark eyes take in the words.

_15 October 1941_

_N 7–1042_

_NOTIFICATION:_

_Your father, Captain, Platoon Commander_

_Oskar Eteri Rodaski_

_In a fight for his Socialist Motherland, loyal to his military oath, having exhibited heroism and bravery, was killed 7 October 1941 near…_

“My condolences, Comrade Lieutenant,” the young man said, but Maggie kept her eyes fixed on the notice, below which was a letter, likely from a fellow officer who would give the details of her father’s death. Maggie inhaled, then glanced up at the boy, her expression a mask of stoicism.

“Comrade. I thank you.”

Then just as abruptly she crumpled the notice in her hand, squeezing it until her knuckles were white and Alex thought her bones might crack from the pressure.

“Maggie,” Alex said. “Maggie, I’m so sorry.”

Maggie turned away and wiped a sleeve over her eyes. “Don’t be.” She was breathing heavily, trying to contain herself.

“If you need to talk, I can—”

“No, Danvers, just leave it, okay?” She nodded to the boy and then the two of them began walking back toward camp.

#

Later, when Maggie had come to her that night, she’d tried not to leave time to talk. She’d pulled Alex to her with a ragged ferocity until they were a tangle of blankets and skin and sweat.

Afterward, they lay in silence in the darkness, Maggie listening to Alex’s breathing, wondering if she should tell her, if she could tell her, about her father. Her past. They’d both been reticent on the subject. Disclosing it meant acknowledging it, placing it back into a world that had done nothing but shift beneath them with a violent consistency. Maggie wanted to forget. Had fooled herself that maybe she'd be able to, and if not, well, she was likely to die anyway.

Oskar’s words came back to her. _Your kind_ are _disloyal. Deceitful. You’re not of the people._

Maggie felt her eyes start to sting and she closed them, her jaw tensing as she remembered. Had her mother received a notification as well? Should she write to her, inquire after her health? But Elena didn’t want her either. Elena had been ashamed of her, that shame compounded by religion and the condemnation of Eliza’s father. She remembered how she’d stumbled into the back of the truck headed for the People’s Volunteers, her stomach as empty as her future and felt a sudden, childish longing for home.

Alex shifted beneath the blankets, draping her leg over her as if trying to press her to the spot. She traced her fingers up her stomach, over her breasts until she was stroking the hair at the nape of her neck.

“I’m in love with you.”

She said it plainly. As if she was observing the weather or the time on her watch. Maggie cupped her face and pressed their foreheads together, but said nothing in response. She swallowed as Alex stroked her cheeks.

“I meant it, Masha,” Alex said. “I love you.”

“Don’t,” she finally whispered. She didn’t want her to see her like this. The tears were falling freely now as Alex leaned in and kissed her, brushed back the hair that was now wet and pressed to her skin.

“I love you,” she repeated. “And I’m so, so sorry about your father.”

“I’m not the only one to lose someone.”

“No. No, you’re not,” Alex said. “I lost mine, too.” She dropped her eyes as Maggie took in the information.

“You never said. You never tell me anything about your family.”

“Well, that makes two of us, no?” Alex said, her smile already tinged with regret. Maggie knew she should have returned those words to her. It was prideful. Stupid of her to deny those feelings. Alex had just thrown her heart out to her, and here Maggie was, keeping herself locked up like some child cowering in a closet.

“What happened to him?” Maggie asked.

Alex snorted. “Ask the NKVD. Ten years. Without right of correspondence. I mean, I shouldn’t talk about it as if there’s no hope. I have that.”

Her face softened again as she looked back at Maggie. "I'm sorry, Maggie. If could do anything, bring him back for you, I'd..."

_Say it. You love her. Say it._

But Maggie couldn’t, for a new rift had fallen between them even as Alex swallowed her uncertainty and reached out. She knew the true meaning of that sentence. Her father had even laughed about it over dinner. Without right of correspondence meant simply that you were shot. "Ten years to come up with a story," Oskar had said. "But often the families, they’ve given up by then. It’s better for them in the end. No corrupting influences and they’re free to live their lives."

“My mother was still sending parcels before the Germans invaded. I used to send him the mathematical problems I'd solved at school, puzzles. Drawings I’d done. We don’t know if he receives them.”

She balled up her fist on Maggie’s stomach. “Sometimes I wish the Germans would just bomb the Lubyanka, you know? Take out that whole bastard organization.”

Maggie exhaled. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” Alex said. “They’re really no different from the Germans and their Gestapo.”

Maggie wasn’t sure if she believed what she said next, she'd never been a believer, not in god or fate or luck. What she did believe since that day Oskar had beaten her in the shed was that people, even those closest to you, could never be trusted. They’d fail you.

“In a war, the inclination towards disloyalty rises. It happens because people are desperate and trying to survive, sure. But they still need to be rooted out.”

“Rooted out?” Alex looked at her, incredulous. She pulled her hand away from Maggie’s face and stared at it as if it were tainted. “Do you know how many men and women I’ve worked on, brought back from the brink only to have them executed? Because in a brief instant they got scared. Because they showed a glimmer of humanity in an inhuman situation. We’re all afraid, Maggie. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“But you don’t let it control you,” Maggie said. She wanted to stop herself. She wanted to pull Alex to her and whisper an apology, for being stupid, for being stubborn, but somehow she couldn’t. Her feet had frozen to the only solid ground she’d ever known. “Socialism is an experiment, Maggie said, “in fairness, in justice. People by nature don’t like that. They’ll do anything they can to undermine the good.”

“An experiment.” Alex bit her lip and shook her head. She tossed off the blankets and Maggie felt her skin prickling in the chill air.

“Alex?” Maggie said, lifting the blanket, trying to cover her once more, but Alex was up, already halfway across that small room, fumbling for her shirt, her trousers. “Real science is in service to the truth. An experiment as you say is done to see if something is real. If it works. If you’ve got to tear people away from their families, imprison them, murder them in cold blood, then maybe,” she breathed, “maybe that’s a pretty good sign that it doesn’t.”

She was breathing hard now, clumsily jabbing a leg into her trousers. Maggie wrapped herself in the blanket and hurried toward her, but Alex straightened and held up her hand.

"Just stop," she said. “What I said to you. That was true. I know it to be because these feelings, they're relentless. Real. No matter how many times I try to prove that they aren't. I can't lock them away or murder them out of existence." She ran the back of her hand over her eyes and started pulling on her boots. "Even if now," her voice broke, "I wish I could."

Then the door slammed and she was gone.

By the time, Maggie had dressed and made her way down the stairs, Alex was nowhere to be seen. She limped through the chaotic front entrance toward the corridor to the supply room. If she could catch her there, if she was alone--

She shoved her way forward, the crutch digging painfully into her arm. She saw a stream of blue trousers, the grey-green of a spotless uniform as he slammed into her. Maggie glanced up, startled by the blue band of the NKVD cap, by the grey, unblinking stare of Captain Gessen.

“Lieutenant,” he said. He held out his hands to steady her. They were gentle. Fatherly.

Maggie gave a breathless salute. “Apologies, Comrade. I was not paying attention."

Gessen smiled. It was genuine and unguarded. “It’s fine. I know you’ve been through a lot. I wanted to express my condolences to you and your mother. Some of my men worked with your father in Biriov. They said Captain Rodaski was one of the finest men the NKVD has ever seen. A true communist.”

Maggie looked down and nodded. She felt her chest tighten with a strange mix of anger and pride stirring inside her. Gessen’s hand tightened on her arm, warm and encouraging. “I can see the same in you,” he said.

Maggie steeled herself and met his eyes. Saw the last thing she expected in a member of the Security Forces. Kindness. Confidence. In her.  
_He does not know, she thought. He does not know what my father called me._  
Oskar must have told them nothing about her departure. It would have made him more suspect. And he was probably too ashamed.

“Thank you, Comrade,” Maggie said, “I’ll try to do him proud.”

“I know you will,” Gessen said. “Listen. Come to me if there’s anything you need. An extra ration, a book. Or if you need to talk.”

“I will,” Maggie said. He gave her another smile and briefly touched his cap. As he turned away, Maggie's eyes rose to meet Alex's. She was standing just a few meters away, her arms wrapped tightly in her white smock as if bracing for the cold. She'd been close enough to hear everything. Close enough to know the truth about her father. And that was when Maggie opened her mouth to speak, the words finally ready to come forth. _I love you. I’m sorry. I was confused. I was hurt. I was wrong._

But Alex’s eyes revealed more than the pain of rejection and the loss of her father. Now they were tinged with fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I erased Watson from this history and gave Rosalind Franklin her due. A bit Soviet of me, but Watson is a sleaze and she deserved so much better.


	30. Glow, Little Glow-Worm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonov spacewalked in 1965, but moved it to '61. 
> 
> Apologies for the delayed update and thank you for reading.

Miklos ran his forging operations in an abandoned bottle factory in the Betro. Maggie’s operatives had done a clean sweep of the offices and upper floors, but the plant, long condemned, was considered a hazard, and had undergone only a cursory check for hiders. The place was about to collapse in on itself. It was damp and freezing and smelled of rust and congealed syrup, like those sweet summers in childhood going to rot.

Maggie entered through a broken window, the glass crunching under her feet as she dropped to the factory floor. She made her way down the long rows of tables, now covered in filth and past the empty carbonation tanks. Pigeons, bristling at the disturbance, rustled in their nesting spaces far above, and Maggie looked up, taking in the sickle of the moon through the shattered skylight.

A few fragments of tinted glass glinted up at her from the concrete, and she trained her beam to the floor, crouching low to pick up part of a bottle. She’d drunk this as a kid when she had an extra kopek. She lifted the shard to her nose and smiled, fingers tracing the faded red letters on the label. _Galina_ , a birch soda.

She tossed the memory back and ghosted the beam over a long row of machinery, long rusted out and broken. It reminded her of the bombed out German munitions factories she’d picked through during the fall of Berlin, and as she stepped further into the room, another scent assailed her. It was sickly sweet like the soda, but bitter like the hardest of ciders, and she trained her flashlight over something viscous and glowing faintly in the darkness.

She leaned down to see a rotten gourd, then passed her eyes over the tables again. There were more of them, that bizarre fruit, even more misshapen. They dangled from stems that had been jammed into pots, some knocked over, others lined up against the wall as if hoping for a stay of execution.

Had Covillev been using this place as a grow house? But why? And more to the point, how?

Even without the safety issues, the place was freezing and exposed to the elements, and certainly, no amount of skylight in Moscow would provide enough sun to nurture more than frostbite this time of year.

She saw it then, jammed beneath a water tank. It looked like a flashlight, but the neck was narrowed into a funnel. She pocketed her flashlight and as she approached and picked it up, it began to shimmer upon her touch.

 “What in Lenin’s name...”

She held it in one hand, turning it as her other slid over its surface, looking for a switch, some kind of mechanism for activation. Her thumb snagged against a groove in the device and a shock of bright light emitted from the end, bathing the area around her in a glow. And then, it grew suddenly, inexplicably heavy, falling from her hand and crashing to the ground hard enough to leave a crack in the concrete. Maggie stumbled back, raising a hand to her face, her heart accelerating. Was it a bomb? Emitting radioactivity? The entire building could be contaminated, the block, the city.

_Stupid, Sawyer. Very stupid._

She stepped back further, her eyes still drawn to the light, until she saw the shadows moving inside it. The plants. At first, she thought they were burning up, their leaves curling in the heat, but they were coming alive, their stems lengthening, regaining color, as the rotten gourds began to regain their shape. She felt her stomach twist as cold beads of sweat began to trickle down her temples, her neck.

Maggie had never been a believer. Still wasn’t. But this was a scare tactic from the church playbook come to gruesome life.

She backed hard into one of the tables and bruised her ass on its sharp edge. She cursed and when her flashlight dropped from her coat, she didn’t bother to pick it up, but continued to back away. Those plants were twitching, curling out and bending toward the light like hundreds of fingers trying to stretch through a grate, responding to the light, like a snake to a charmer’s flute. 

She heard the cock of a gun and whirled around, her own drawn at a tall silhouette with a decidedly relaxed demeanor.

“You might want to step away from that,” he said.  She recognized the voice and the American accent. He stepped forward, gun still drawn, his other hand held up in a placating gesture, but Maggie stood her ground, all too aware of the tendrils snaking toward her across the factory floor.

 “Really?” she said in English, “the camera jockey?”

“Yeah,” Olsen said, also switching to English. “I’ll drop this if you promise to step away from that mess. I’m serious. You don’t want to tangle with that.”

As if in answer, Maggie heard a rustling at her feet and looked down to see a tendril curling around her foot.

“Fucking fuck!”

She kicked at it and hopped away as Olsen lowered his gun and hurried toward her. Maggie lowered hers and let him step between her and the growing mass of slithering vegetation. She wasn’t one to let herself be rescued, but this was an extraordinary circumstance. Olsen grabbed a metal bar and poked at the device. Then with great effort, he rolled it toward him and under his foot, pressing down to switch it off. Darkness descended on the room, and he took her arm, walking her back as her eyes adjusted. She could see the plants, still moving, but losing that sudden vibrancy, that momentum.

Olsen picked up her dropped flashlight and dusted it off. When he handed it back to her, Maggie took it hesitantly. It felt contaminated now, but she shut down that squeamishness and trained it back over the plants. They were still twitching slightly, the gourds had regained their shape and color.

“What _is_ this?” she asked.

Olsen laughed, but there was palpable relief on his face; it had scared him, too. “Now is the part where I remind you that you’re KG--.”

“--and I tell you that I can lock you up for trespassing. Clearly, you’re not here on a P.R. shoot,” Maggie said.

Olsen nodded slowly. “Yeah. They don’t know you’re here either, do they?”

Maggie crossed her arms and stared at him. “You’re pushing your luck, Comrade. This is an official scene of investigation whatever motives you’re trying to impart. So you start talking and maybe you won’t spend a couple of weeks in Lefortovo before being sent home on Aeroflot. In coach. You’ll be fine, sure, but your cronies in the State Department won’t.”

He shook his head and chuckled softly, but the arrogance was gone from his tone. “Maybe we can compromise. You think we can trust each other?”

Maggie shot a look back at the plants. “You saved my life. I can bank on that. For a bit.”

#

For the Cosmonaut, existence is an orderly form of dissonance. The sun rises fifteen times a day, yet she ages fractions of a second more slowly than on earth. She sleeps, her body afloat, yet still requires a pillow strapped to her head in order to drift off. There’s a strange smell, too. Not just of recirculated air mingled with sweat and opened packets of food, but a sharply metallic odor that infuses a spacecraft. It had often been remarked upon by Gagarin and Titov. Leonov, who’d made that first successful spacewalk in 1961, had returned to the craft reeking of copper, as if the universe had its own lifeblood.

Human.

But Kara was _not_ human.

She’d sensed this since girlhood, and known it since her alliance with Lillian, who, while maintaining a respectful yet proprietary relationship, never failed to remind her she was not of this earth. That was the deal between them. Kara would be returned to her home and hearth in the stars, while the Soviet Union would obtain the technology, the force able to ensure that no such invasions would occur again on Soviet soil.

“It’s bad enough with the travel restrictions being lifted,” Lillian had said. “How are you to ensure the health of a people when you’re allowing infection.”

“I thought the slogan was ‘workers of the world unite,’” Kara said.

Lillian smirked and turned back from the window. “Oh, they can have our ideas. Do whatever they want with them, but we are shaping a people.” She laughed and drew the curtain. “Do you know what Comrade Stalin did when he welcomed back those in exile?”

Kara shook her head and Lillian came and sat across from her. “He had them met at the docks. At the airports. Then he picked out the most useful, the doctors, the scientists, and had the others shot on sight. They’d been infected, you see. By outside ideas. But don't worry, Kara Starikov. You are useful to us. Those who are not will ruin all we have worked for.”

Kara shook off the memory, feeling a brief stab of disgust. At Lillian, but also at her own reticence, at her fevered need to find answers. She'd told herself that it wasn't entirely out of selfishness; Alex would be safe. Eliza, too, even if they would live out their lives on opposite sides of the Curtain.

She'd hoped they'd find their way back to each other. That things would  change, and they had, somewhat. There were signs of hope.

You couldn’t keep people perpetually isolated and shut out.

Ideas and information, the collective swell of feelings got through, via blankets tossed over barbed wire even as the East Germans constructed their wall. In the records and tins of food Lena had so generously shared with her, in the swell of music that now rolled through the command module, as buoyant as the objects that floated around her. 

_Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire, glow like an incandescent wire…_

Monelev, legs up like a vacationer sinking back into the crest of a wave, held the Sapphire FM to his ear, waving its antenna this way and that until the signal was strong and the music rang loudly through the craft.

_Thou aeronautical boll weevil, illuminate yon woods primeval…_

“Courtesy of KXI Chicago, Comrades,” he grinned, extending his hand toward the porthole and the Great Lakes sliding beneath them. He pushed the antenna out further, nearly catching it in a tangle of cables and turned the dial once more, eyes narrowed in concentration. 

_I climb way up to the top of the stairs, and there my cares just drift right into space…_

He beamed. “Yes! That’s the stuff!” he looked at Kara, “this is the Drivers!”

“Drifters,” Kara corrected him, thinking again of Lena. That music had been one of the first signs she didn’t take after her mother. Lillian had never listened to anything other than the approved playlist: Prokofiev, early Shostakovich, and the soundtracks from those bloody Stalin-approved musicals. She doubted Lillian really cared for music as anything other than a way to signal correctness of form. But Lena, Lena was a seeker, curious, the small confines of her cabin stacked with books and music, of foreign scents and tastes.

 “Comrade Monelev. What are you  _doing?”_ Borodin clambered out of her seat in the command module and swam through the narrow tunnel, her face flushed and angry.

Monelev reached out and gathered her into his arms. “Enjoying myself.” He took her hands and began to twirl her gently in the cramped space.

 “No! You’re playing capitalist propaganda on a Soviet spacecraft,” she said. She pushed herself away and made a grab for the radio.

“And isn’t it wonderful?” He took her hand again and made a mock bow. She didn’t resist this time, but her expression stayed in a state of firm disapproval.  “They’ll hear,” she whispered.

“ _Are_ hearing,” Kara said, but she found herself smiling, feeling a pool of warmth and sadness well up inside her, at the flirtation blossoming between the two cadets, at all the clumsy and complicated humanity Monelev and Borodin represented. That other home, the heart she might never see again.

_At night the stars put on a show for free, and darling, you can share it all with me…_

“You’re an idiot,” Borodin said.

“An idiot who loves to dance.” Monelev tilted her backward and she laughed and danced with him, the two of them whirling in the corridor until the COM crackled to life.

“Troika, this is Samovar, over. What is your status? And what is that _sound_?”

“See?” Borodin whispered, her smile flattening. She pushed away from Monelev sailed back to the control module.

“Copy, Samovar,” she said, pushing herself gently back down into her seat, “I was…sleeping.” She glanced back at Kara. “Starikov is securing the inventory. We have picked up some…interference.”

She looked back at Monelev, glaring. “Shut it off,” she mouthed. He turned it down and Kara felt the loss of the music, that one last tenuous connection to a memory. To Lena.

“The Chief Designer will now speak with you,” said the voice. “Troika, are you ready to receive?”

 “Affirmative, Samovar,” Borodin said. “We have you loud and clear.”

“Comrade Cadets. I am sorry to disturb you from your much-needed rest.”

There was a long pause, the hiss of static as they took in the voice. Not J’onn’s, but another, cold and as dry as a rusk. Borodin gave Monelev a questioning look, but he shrugged, his eyes wide and confused. Kara folded her arms and felt a shudder escape. They had taken J’onn off the mission. _Why?_

“We are in good spirits, Samovar,” Borodin said, her voice shaking. She leaned back and forced some lightheartedness into her tone. “I was told we’d speak to the Chief Designer,” she said, “Is that Manhunter off upbraiding someone again?”

She was using his nickname, Kara thought, broaching the question as gently and as casually as she could. There was a rattle of nervous laughter and then another long silence on the other end.

“The Comrade is no longer in charge of this project,” said the voice. “I will be in contact with you from now on. Now, please provide me with your status. We are going to have to step things up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in Stalin's treatment of returning expats, there's a good movie called East/West (1999) with the late Sergei Bodrov Jr. and Catherine Deneuve.


	31. Lagrange Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for the late update. I had a rough time with this chapter as in reading Orbital Mechanics for Dummies and realizing that Dummies might be a level or two above my comprehension. Another chapter is in the pipeline and coming soon. Thank you for reading.

Lena left the main control room and strode out into the empty corridor. Those TsUP techs had denied her a headset, but she’d been able to catch some of Gruskov’s orders over the COM. The coordinates made no sense. They were downright suicidal.

Dipping the craft into such a low Earth orbit meant the payload was certain to burn up and send a rain of debris down on the taiga.

She allowed herself to pace, heels loud against the tile as her thoughts raced one another to a myriad of disturbing conclusions. If that thing was alive, human, they’d be killing it. And for what? But another thought occurred to her—what if it was a carrier? A subject infected with some bioengineered virus? The reentry perimeter was small enough, over a sparse enough area that the loss of population would be a blip in the census. An expendable populace. They could blame it on a pipeline explosion or a natural disaster. She heard a cough behind her. One of her minders had already followed her out; a potato-faced youth who watched her with all the subtlety of a pop-eyed lemur. Lena stopped and leveled him with a glare, delighting as he shuffled and faced the window.

 “You,” she said. The boy turned, his mouth slack. “Got a cigarette?”

He fumbled in his jacket pocket and tugged out a crumpled pack, offering her one wordlessly. She nodded in thanks and allowed him to light it, then took a single drag, delighting in that first rush of nicotine. She exhaled the smoke in his face.

She hadn’t slept, not out of any fear that she’d be dragged away in the night. They needed her too much for that.  But she had lain all the same in her now guarded cabin, listening to the wind tear across the steppe as the knot grew tighter in her chest. She should have acted, should have contacted that Olsen fellow, or hell, walked right into the U.S. Embassy and offered up what she knew.

She had enough information. More than enough.

But there was Kara.

She might tell herself it was loyalty to J’onn, a vague reluctance to betray the Motherland, but none of those things really factored in.

It was Kara.

Kara who’d shown her a side she’d denied so many others, that face made of sun and light and poetry, who then turned and showed her another--one ageless, desirous, and achingly tender. That shift, more than the launch, had destroyed her sense of perspective, sent her tumbling to the earth even as Kara soared above it.

And despite the launch, the betrayal, Lena could still only think of her. Of her safety. Of seeing her again. Touching her.

 “Comrade Luthor.”

Winn Schott stood at the end of the corridor, his softness now replaced with an expression both cold and inscrutable. He wore the full military dress of a cadet rather than the rumpled shirt and tie he’d donned as a computer specialist. Lena frowned and tossed the cigarette to the floor, crushed it with the rest of her hope.

 “What is it?” she said.

Schott flicked his head toward one of the smaller meeting rooms. “You’re needed.”  

He held the door open as she followed, the potato-faced guard tailing behind her until Schott lifted his hand, and with uncharacteristic force, shoved the boy back into the hall. “Not for your ears, comrade.”

To Lena’s surprise, her minder relented, ducking back from the entrance with a blithe salute.

J’onn was there, hands folded, at the end of a long conference table. The blackboard behind him was dusted with numbers and lines, loose circles depicting orbits and impact trajectories. He must have been there for hours, she realized, her mind already working on the numbers.

“I’ve tampered with the wiring,” Winn said. “We aren’t being recorded. You may speak freely, but our time is short.” The softness was returning to his features, Lena saw, his posture relaxing into something like relief, and she felt a fresh wave of admiration for the cadet. His act had been more than convincing, but the effort required from one of his gentle disposition must have been exhausting.

 “Good to see you, Lena Lionelovna.”J’onn slapped an arm around Lena’s shoulders and Lena leaned into him, allowing herself a brief moment to feel safe. 

“You, too, comrade.”

“Did you get the updated numbers, Schott?” he asked

Winn slipped a memo from his pocket. It was covered with a loose scrawl and he began flipping through it with his index finger.  “I’ve got the recent calculations from the Argon,” he nodded up to the board, “Accurate from what I can tell, but the dispatch point for the payload, along with the Zvezda’s reentry trajectory, is…odd. Were the Zvezda to attempt reentry, the impact point would be over the Barents Sea.”

“Soviet spacecraft aren't constructed for splashdowns," Lena said. "We've only done it once and that was a dire circumstance. To plan for it, and outside our territory?"

 “Unless,” J’onn said, “they don’t intend to bring the craft back at all.”

The words were quiet, almost whispered, as if the Chief Designer could not quite bring himself to say it. He reached over and took a nub of chalk from the tray and placed it unsteadily over a line on the board. As he traced another white line over the grey, Lena kept her eyes on the movement, waiting, waiting, until his hand suddenly stopped, let it trail off.

“You can’t mean that, J’onn,” she said. “Even if, even _if_ they considered the pilots expendable, the Zvezda’s the pride and joy of the program.”

“And a secret from all but those who work on it.” He met her eyes. Kept them there and she shook her head, felt a shudder ride through her. Of dread. And anger. J’onn was feeling sorry for her. How dare he feel sorry for her when he’d pushed her toward Kara? All of that nonsense, that flattery about her background in psychoanalysis, when likely he knew. He _knew_.

“O-of course,” Winn said, his hands flailing, trying to defuse the situation,  “those Americans love the spread rumors. The 'lost cosmonauts.' The ‘Lyudmila’ recording. I doubt we'd do any such thing, Comrade Designer. To what purpose?"

J’onn placed a hand on Lena’s arm, trying to steady her, but she tore it away.  “You knew she wasn’t safe," Lena said, "All of them. You _knew_.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders this time, ducked his head until his eyes were level with hers.  “There are many secrets I have kept from you, Lena Lionelovna, but _that_ is not one of them.”

 “Then what is it?” Her voice was ragged. It sounded as if she had smoked the entire pack rather than a single cigarette to calm her nerves.“What does all of this point to?” She lifted a hand to her face, felt the dampness on her cheeks and J’onn's eyes drifted back to the board. There were hard creases around his eyes, lines she hadn’t seen before. What he was to tell her, was in fact, far worse.

“These numbers here aren’t for the Zvezda. They’re for probes, missions we've lost. All top secret and all in the very same spot. I am only now beginning to understand why.”

# 

“Not from around here, is it?” Maggie said. She held the device in her hand. The weight had lifted after Olsen had shut it off, and the thing was once again as light as a poster tube.

“Nope.” Olsen shoved his hands into the pockets of his woolen coat. “We’re still working on the where, but that weight you felt. The energy powering it up is coming from very far away. That’s the take from our eggheads anyhow.”

Maggie turned it, careful not to press the controls. The metal was smooth and warm under her touch and her curiosity fought with a vague sense of revulsion. She didn’t frighten easily, but this thing—those plants-- made her want to find somewhere remote, hurl it into a ravine.

 “You with NASA?” Maggie said.

Olsen pursed his lips. “Am. And not. I’m part of a new Department.  We’re a go-between, NASA, the F.B.I., the State Department, International as well. We’re an all-purpose watchdog with a dash of the strange mixed in.

“Sounds a little like us,” Maggie said. “That last part anyway.”

“We dress better,” Olsen said, “and lay off the truncheons, but yeah.”

Maggie turned the lens up to face her and the moonlight reflected off its bejeweled surface. It was like staring into the eyes of an oversized dragonfly. She felt that instinctive tingle she got when her back was turned to a door and covered the lens.

 “So what _do_ they say? Your egg yolks?”

Olsen suppressed a smile and Maggie shot him a glare before laughing herself. “I meant to imply they were soft.”

Olsen cleared his throat. “Know anything about quantum entanglement?”

“No,” Maggie said.

He shrugged, “It’s all Wiley Coyote stuff to me, too. Suffice to say, our yolks think it opens up a pocket around it, that there are these ‘quantum’ strings linking it to the gravitational forces of distant bodies,” he looked up through the skylight, “out there somehow.” He laughed. “Here we are barely managing to remote control of our satellites and these guys are hooked up to gas giants thousands of light years away.”

“And this?” Maggie said. She lifted her free hand, showed him where a long knife scar once trailed between her knuckles down the back of her hand. The spot felt tender as if she’d gotten the wound months ago rather than during the war. The color was evening out, the scar almost healed.

“You saw what happened,” Olsen said, “as with the fruit. That light works on your cells. Same interference.”

“Won’t last though, will it?” Maggie said.

 “You know a lot more than I thought,” Olsen said. 

“Which is...”

He cocked his head and smiled. “I’ve told you too much already. Your turn.”

Maggie placed the device down on one of the assembly tables and wiped her hands on her coat. “Covillev’s got a lot of sick disciples. Terminal cases that were miraculously recovering. That’s how he kept them in check. And now, without these hothouse beauties, they’re falling apart again. Dying.” She held her hand up closer, marveling at the smooth skin. “Am I going to fall apart, too?”

Olsen shook his head. “Not unless you had something seriously wrong with you to begin with. That scar will come back, of course. From what we’ve seen, ingesting it through that,” he glanced over at the fruit, still bright and firm despite its rotted out appearance minutes before, “makes the effects last longer.”

Maggie shoved her hand in her pocket and shuddered. “I thought Covillev was your run-of-the-mill cult leader. Another revival of Russian Cosmism mixed with hippy crap. Turns out there’s some truth buried in the hokum.”

“What do you mean?”

“The teachings of Nikolai Fyorodov,” Maggie said, "radical life extension, immortality and resurrection. Somehow Covillev found a way to it.”

She could barely believe what she was saying. The magnitude of it shoved away every certainty, every principle, the hardened belief system she’d built over a lifetime of surviving. Loyalty to the state? That was just more collateral damage. Something was coming. Something that would turn all ideology on its head.

“Allow me to be blunt, Lieutenant,” Olsen said, “I didn’t expect to find all this. Didn’t know how deeply you’d gotten involved.  I was tailing you. I’d been instructed to approach you on the off-chance you might tur…” he stopped himself, “…be persuaded to help. We know Covillev’s put down roots in our government, that he’s likely working under someone much higher up on your side, people who want to use this technology for some very bad ends. But we need names.”

“Roma Yetz,” Maggie said. She saw Olsen blink at the abruptness of her answer and pressed on. “One of your people got him out of Cuba. We lost the trail there. There are others. A list of his disciples who’ve slipped out on false passports and under the aegis of your government. I can give you that list, but you need to give me something in return.”

Olsen cocked his head. “Name it.”

“All of it,” Maggie said. “Siberia. The crash landings. Tunguska. KANSAS. I need to know how Luthor was involved.”

Olsen took a step back in surprise and nodded slowly. “That’s pretty damned resourceful, Lieutenant.”

Maggie glanced up, saw a pigeon dart down through the skylight. It settled on one of the gourds and began pecking away. “Not enough for what’s coming,” she said.

#

“A pocket of the sky,” J’onn said. He wiped his sleeve across the board, erasing a large section with a single movement. Lena smiled at the smear of white on his arm. This was the old J’onn, the Chief Designer who paced and ranted when he was deep in a problem, oblivious to ink stains and chalk dust.

He drew a long rectangle in the empty space, dotted the inside with x’s. “Things that fall within it don’t come down, as if they’ve passed through something or been caught.”

“An interference trap,” Lena said.

J’onn leaned back and squinted at the board, adding another mark. “We thought it might be sunspots, Northern Lights interference, but they’d just disappear. The odd thing was that we’d still get signals. All coming from the points where they blipped out of existence. As if they were stuck on a loop in time. We shifted the coordinates, but there was another pattern in the mix, three Kosma probes crashed down near Lake Shipka before we changed the impact radius altogether. Their trajectories were all off as if they’d bounced off a powerful force. A wall of some kind.”

He turned back to them. “I was thinking in practicalities. Avoid that site and push forward with the program. We were so strapped, so eager to maintain our edge over the Americans that we didn’t look into the anomaly. But someone was. I think--” He stopped and looked down at the floor, took in a long breath, his eyes seeming to fix on a new reality. “I’ve run some calculations on where those ghost signals were coming from, and I think what we’ve got here is a net. Some kind of,” he shook his head, in near disbelief, “simulated gravitational force, a Lagrange point that keeps them there in that section of the sky.”

Winn’s lips parted slightly. “You’re talking a Type III civilization.”

“As per Comrade Kardashev’s theory,” J’onn said. “I can’t explain it any other way.”

Lena averted her eyes, felt reality folding in on itself. J’onn was a cautious man. Practical. He’d thought Kardashev was an attention seeker and that such speculations were jumping too far ahead. “Let’s get to the moon first before we think about the stars,” he’d say. “We’re a Type I. That’s as far as I’m willing to take it.”

Type I was a planetary civilization, only able to harvest resources from the Earth, Type II was stellar, and a Type III was too much to take in. Limitless energy. Limitless possibilities.

She pressed her fingers to her temples as she lost her sense of balance. Kara. An image of her in the Hydrolab, pushing Schott up from the bottom of the pool. The way she’d cracked the bedpost and that strange language she’d spoken in her sleep.

_Listen! If the stars are lit…_

The room spun and she fell forward, barely steadying herself on a chair back. J’onn and Winn were oblivious, still focused on the board.

 “First Contact,” Lena said to herself. She let out a quiet laugh. _Contact._ One lonelier and more intimate than she could have imagined.

“Winn,” J’onn said, “is it possible to take control the Zvezda through the Argon?”

 “No, comrade. Perhaps in another decade or so, but...but…” Winn lifted his finger, worrying his bottom lip. “There are ways we can communicate without notice.”

“How?” Lena said.

“The command module has a crude display screen. My doing. Very crude. Not much space. I can input code that they can read on the other end. Here it will simply be zeroes and ones. There? Legible messages. We can warn them. Get them the manual override code if need be."

J’onn looked at his watch and tendered a smile. His eyes were lit up again, alive.  “Then let's get to work, comrades. Regain control of that ship or at the very least, hand it back to its pilots.”

Lena straightened, wanting to fight the selfish hope now welling up inside her. She wanted Kara safe. She wanted her home and back in her arms. But to Kara, Lena wasn't home, only a means of getting there.  To save her would be to destroy everything she'd worked for, as a woman--as that other self. It would either be Kara's happiness or her own. And now both forces worked on her, keeping her mired in place. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like conspiracy theories, but the 'Lost Cosmonauts' is a favorite campfire tale. The 'Lyudmilla' recording, despite being roundly debunked, is chilling.


	32. The Sharashka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A plotty chapter. More on the way soon after this long delay. Was on vacation but will be trickling it out very soon.

Undisclosed Facility, 1940

He could not tell if the light from beneath the door was real or floaters burned on his retinas by the light of the interrogation lamps. He did not know if this was day or night or some time in between. _Chas koldovstva_ , _ushimitsudoki_ , the witching hour.

It did not matter.

Only Eliza mattered, and Kara, although he knew she’d take care of herself. And Alex. Perhaps more than anything, Alex.

“She still doesn’t know the truth,” Eliza had told him. “She knows Kara is special, that we’re hiding her, but it’s Astra’s influence that’s keeping her from digging further.”

It was a few short weeks before they were taken, one of those rare bursts of early spring. He and Eliza had taken a stroll outside the clinic, one that should have been pleasant and leisurely,  but there was too much to be picked over and considered. Time, despite the seeming calm that had fallen over the village, was running desperately short.

 “I hope you’re right about that,” Jeremiah said. “It’s for her own good.”

"Well, Alex is inquisitive by nature,” Eliza said, the bitterness catching in her voice. “But she's also lonely. You might have been above it all at her age, but she’s been preoccupied with adolescence.” She paused, her expression softening as she saw the hurt cross her husband's features. “I know it’s the only way to keep her safe, but I must say, it…feels wrong.”

He nodded toward the clinic. Through the window they could see a young man pacing back and forth, laughing and gesturing. Alex's laughter followed. “She seems to like your research assistant. What’s his name?”  


“Dmitri,” Eliza said.

Had Alex married him? he wondered. There was talk. Alex had even blushed when the question came up, but somehow Jeremiah had sensed that, however pleasant, the young man was a means rather than an end. Alex was growing up, growing up and finding herself different, the inevitable process that shrank the world around you, made you desperate to escape by any means possible. Whether it was through marriage or a horse rustled from a collective, he hoped she'd managed it.  
For Jeremiah, such freedom could only be internal.

He’d been put in a small cell with three others. His bunkmate was a rather elderly man, an old school revolutionary either suffering from dementia or the after-effects of torture. His stories about the 1905 revolt and the 1917 Revolution blended together, as well as their players, the Narodniks became Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks turned into Kerenskyite loyalists. Considering the logic of the interrogators, it made a strange sort of sense.

“I could not tell,” said another of his cellmates, a young intellectual named Osip, “if they wanted me to confess to sabotaging the grain harvest for 1937 or collaborating with Finnish spies in stealing factory blueprints. If they would only give me a hint and I would happily give them what they want. But they’re so bloody unclear about it all.”

With Jeremiah, however, they were unfailingly direct. They didn’t toy with him or try to lull him into a false sense of security. They would commence beating him with a few blows to the face and gut, take a truncheon to his knees, his knuckles, careful not to damage the writing hand. They would pour cold water on him as he drifted out of consciousness and leave him shivering on the floor of the cell for hours at a time. And they had two simple questions.

_Where is the girl?_

__

__

_Where is Astra Imzeyevna?_

Time was now meted out in bruises and burns, in maps marked with possible hideout locations waved in his face.

On the seventeenth day-- really, he’d lost count, but he liked the ring to it: the year of the Revolution, Eliza’s birthday, his age when he’d gone off to university--they came for him. Two uniformed guards dragged him from his bunk, pulling him crudely by the arms down the suffocating corridor and up an unevenly built flight of stairs. As the door to his cell closed behind him, his elderly bunkmate called out, “give them a good story, tovarisch! It helps if you tell them what they’re looking for.”

They dropped him hard to the concrete and he rolled onto his back, hearing the snap of a heavy bolt being lifted, the groan of a metal door. A shaft of sunlight invaded his sight. The dragging resumed as he was yanked unceremoniously down a steep flight of stairs, their concrete edges cutting into his back. He took in a startled breath and the air, perfumed by steppe grass and machine oil, set him to retching.

This wasn’t the frigid Siberian gulag he’d envisioned. He was somewhere warmer. Georgia, perhaps? Kyrgyzstan?

He lifted his hands to block the light, saw a cloudless steel gray sky through his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut. The open air could mean only one thing, and he wanted his last thoughts to be of Eliza and Alex and the warm fields of Trenevosk. He could be like the old man, force his mind into the past, live his last moments there. He heard Eliza singing that chanson she liked. _L’Hirondelle du Faubourg,_ learned during her childhood when foreign music wasn’t yet considered a bourgeois indulgence. He heard Alex calling him from atop the stairs. She had always done that. Hollering. Startling him whenever she had a question about chemistry or physics. He had always grumbled but never failed to go to her. Alex's excuse, he admitted, had always been valid. “I needed to hold my train of thought,” she’d say. “Remember what Pessin wrote about memory and context?”

That child, he thought. That mind.

He could feel himself there now, smell the flowers Eliza placed in the vase by the window sill, her perfume. He could feel the softness of the scarf she’d knitted for him in his hands. He stilled himself, buried his hands into its warmth until he realized...it was real.

Had they shot him already?

He felt rough fingers in his hair, a dry hand on his cheek.

“It’s real, comrade,” said a voice. “You can open your eyes.”

He heard a faint whimper escape his throat _._

__It was fine like this. I was at peace and you…_ _

__

_He opened his eyes, slowly raising his head toward the shadows assembled around him._  Then he glanced back down at his hands, expecting the softness in his fingers to disappear, the smell to dissipate in the dry desert air, but it was there, the scarf Eliza had knitted him five winters ago when they’d first moved to Trenevosk. When the future still seemed bright. The guards were standing down, far away in fact, their postures relaxed as they lit each other’s cigarettes.  This wasn’t a yard. They were out in front of the facility. A cart fronted by two mares and a long black Volga, its tires coated in dust waited at the end of a narrow, unpaved road. Jeremiah looked back at the building, saw he was kneeling at the bottom of the stairs. Above him loomed an enormous, clumsily painted sign which read “The Strugatsky Sanitorium.”

__

Breathing heavily, in both relief and disbelief, he gripped Eliza’s scarf in his hands, holding it to his face until a shadow eclipsed it.

__

“It came a few weeks ago. I wanted to give it to you myself.”

__

Jeremiah glanced upward into the face of a tall, angular man with wolfish features. He wasn’t dressed like a guard or a prominent party member, but this suit was tailored. It was clear from his gaunt appearance, however, that he was not a free man.

__

 “They said it would help to persuade you,” the man said, “if I plied you with keepsakes, a few luxuries from home. But I knew you aren’t such a man.”

__

Jeremiah parted his lips. Speech was painful, the words catching in his throat. “What kind of man am I?”

__

 “Of science,” he said. He tilted his head at him, his expression casual yet curious. “You feel robbed, don’t you?”

__

“Of what?” Jeremiah raised his hand to his eyes. The glare from the sun was starting to smart.

__

“It’s nothing to feel ashamed of. I would feel that way myself.” He gestured around him, down to the scars on Jeremiah’s face, his hands. “You’ve gone through all this to protect that girl, put your family at risk, and Imzeyevna wouldn’t even trust you with her secret.”

__

Jeremiah bit his lip. He _knew._ He certainly knew enough about the girl to be erased by the NKVD. The man was trying to sting his pride. Make him defensive.

__

“Must hurt. I assume you did enough on your own part of answer those questions yourself. Then...” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and beginning to pace, his voice growing oddly tremulous, “...then you got dragged here. Tortured. Beaten. And all they asked was for her location. You’re the great Jeremiah Danvers, graduate from the Moscow Institute, esteemed pupil of Michurin. Of course it was to protect her, to protect you and your family. But still it must have stung.”

__

It took Jeremiah another minute to place the face. He had seen it countless times, in newsreels extolling the heroes of the Revolution, the scientists who were going to push the Soviet Union into the future, and in later ones of show trials, condemning the bourgeois traitors of the Soviet people.  Lionel Alexandrovitch Luthor was both the father and the destroyer of Soviet Science, the ghost of Christmas past and future, and now…something else. A shadow behind the scenes.

__

Luthor cast a pitying look back at the guards. “I am not a part of this,” he said, “just playing for time, my friend. You know how it goes. You’re in a gulag, barely on your first work detail and you’ll be joined by the man who arrested you, and the man who arrested him, and not drop of ill-will. If you come with me, it will be the same. But with men like us, committed to science and nothing else.”

__

Jeremiah fell into a coughing fit and Luthor chuckled. "Easy, friend. It’s this damned air and the dehydration." He removed a flask from his pocket and opened it, putting it to Jeremiah’s lips. It wasn’t vodka, but a robust Georgian red that seemed to thicken his blood as he drank. It dribbled from his chin as Luthor pulled it away, and he wiped his chin gently with the edge of his sleeve. “Come. You’ll have a bed with feathers, food, parcels from your family. But perhaps more importantly,” and he clapped a hand on his shoulder, “a brotherhood dedicated to research over ideology.There’s no better freedom than that.”

__

He tucked the flask into his pocket and held out his other hand. Jeremiah looked at his own, purpled and coated in dried blood. For a moment, he squeezed Eliza’s scarf, tightly as if for life itself, and then with one hand he let it go and allowed Lionel Luthor to pull him to his feet.

__


	33. The Martyr

She knew as soon as she entered the building.

The way the guard flinched as he glanced up at her, the knowing smile she received from Karzai, Dmitrov’s sniveling right arm.  As she bounded down the stairs and entered the narrow reeking corridor leading to Covillev’s cell, she saw the men clustered near the half-open door. One turned, holding his hand up to stop her. Maggie pushed him away, enjoying the startled grunt as he hit the soiled wall. He’d be cleaning that uniform for days, she thought.

A doctor in a grey coat greeted her, irritated by the intrusion. Bondarev, who sat slumped on the edge of the cot, gave her a shrug.

“It wasn’t me,” he said, pushing himself up to leave. “I’d let you know if it was.”

“I know," Maggie said, for once grateful for Bondarev’s vicious integrity. “You’d do a better job of it, too.”

“Damn straight,” he said. He jammed an unlit cigarette between his lips and let it dangle there. “This was a fucking mess.” 

He shrugged again and patted her on the back before strutting back out to the stairwell. Covillev lay on a pile of bloody sheets in the corner of the cell. He’d been beaten badly, but that hadn’t been what finished him. She could see the rags, tied together in water knots and wrung tightly enough to form the rope he or whoever it was, used to cut off the air. She leaned against the door and cursed.

 _The fucking timing,_ she thought. _I could have made him talk this time. I could have offered him intel from Olsen, offered to trade him with some semblance of truth in my voice._

She turned to the doctor. “When?”

He blinked at her, the irritation—as if she’d interrupted him during a strenuous bowel movement— still stretched across his face. “Last night. Sometime after lights out.”

“I could have told you that,” Maggie said. “May I?” She stepped over to the body, ignoring his protests and kneeled on the concrete, looking into Covillev’s clear, lifeless eyes.

“Congratulations, friend. You’ve martyred yourself.”

She swallowed, surprised by the brief twinge of sadness. Covillev was up to no good, that was certain, but had Maggie been religiously inclined, she would have taken his cult over an Orthodox patriarch any day. Emilia’s promise that the Order saw nothing wrong with their kind had been true. Covillev was more than happy to look away from the homosexual dalliances occurring among his members. That was cult playbook 101, of course, their leaders feeding off of alienation and rejection, but it _had_ felt good. To be open. To feel welcomed and included.

She reached down and closed the priest's eyes, her own catching on something nestled in the folds of his prison garb. She thought it was a piece of button at first, but the shape was cylindrical, the material glinting in the dim light. Whoever’d done this had knocked out a tooth, and Maggie’s operative training told her that filling held more than zinc.  

Slowly, she pressed her hand over it, pretending to push herself up from the ground. As she slipped it into her pocket, she wondered how it had remained concealed from both the KGB and Covillev's attacker. It was possible, she thought, that someone passed it to him after capture.


	34. The Maelstrom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything that rises must converge. This chapter was a killer. Thanks for reading!

They were warned.

It had happened to Volodya Hendel during a routine spacewalk. Assigned as a spotter for Alexei Leonov, Hendel glanced away from his instruments and saw a pocket of stars through the open hatch.  

 _I’ll just take one look_ , he thought.

It was Leonev who noticed first, who snatched Hendel’s unattached lifeline as he floated adrift from the craft.

“A tragedy,” Hendel remarked.  

To be dragged away from those unparalleled views, the chance to see the stars in their true colors, not the white points seen from the Earth, but the deepest of greens and reds when the Voskhod tumbled toward the night side of the planet.

Jackie Cochran hadn’t been as lucky. Lulled by the gentle drift of the stars and the Earth beneath her, some say she simply couldn’t hear the frantic calls from Houston, from her crewmate Jerrie Cobb, who’d tried unsuccessfully to pull her back inside. But while NASA and the media fretted over the now tainted viability of sending women into orbit, astronaut and cosmonaut alike knew instinctively what had led to Cochran’s death. A view that grand tugged at you, and once you succumbed, it would soothe and embrace you like water and you’d snap out of your trance to find yourself stranded with only a few hours of air. Enough time to contemplate eternity. 

For Kara, that pull was even more powerful. She’d felt it on the ground, in the rays of the sun. But once the ship had broken through the clouds, it had surged through her, a system reconfiguring her cells, her consciousness. It was as if she was being fed for the first time, nurtured—that was not the right word—cradled, enfolded in an energy that was progressively tightening its grip.

What she did not feel was loved.

This euphoria was a rational one, sharpening the once buried recollections of her homeworld, the swathes of Brutalist architecture juxtaposed by almost Byzantine ornamentation, the words of eminent philosophers, of scientists, and great men and women better represented by statues than by their flesh and blood inspirations.

“They will know you for what you are, Kara Zor-El,” Lillian had said, placing emphasis on the ‘what.’

And they did. The light was wooing her, singing a melody both brutal and seductive, but something was keeping her from fully succumbing. Her time on Earth, her feelings for her adoptive family, for Alex and the comrades she had fought alongside had bent the light that was only now reaching her. And then there was Lena, a hidden body, lensing the rays from those distant stars, bringing who Kara was even more sharply into focus.

Borodin fired the thrusters in reverse, slowing the speed of the craft in a Hohmann maneuver to shift the Zvezda into a lower orbit. As they approached the anomaly, Kara watched her two compatriots with concern. Borodin and Monelev had been prepared to release a tracking probe, one that would aid in monitoring airspace. But now as the craft descended, they could see it for the first time.

There was no frozen taiga spread beneath them, that landscape was occluded, a dim, greyish outline around what could only be described as infinity. For gaping up at them was a vast hexagonal field of color, numinous and stingingly vivid, its borders sharply delineated, rational, and clearly constructed by an intelligence beyond their imagining.

Borodin gasped as the hull of the Zvezda reflected back at them from its surface, the scattering of stars above them like ghost constellations superimposed over untold distances.

 “We are making our descent. Report, Samovar,” Borodin said, then lost the formality in her voice altogether. “What in Stalin’s name is this?”

She was answered by static, by muffled sounds of excitement and fear as TsUP took in this miracle through the snowy black and white feed on their monitors.

Borodin paused and repeated, “Samovar, this is Troika. Are you seeing this?”

Static. More stifled exclamations. After a long moment, the ground navigator, his voice both menacing and obsequious, came on the line.

“Troika, we are. Proceed as planned.”

“Samovar,” Borodin said, her expression equal parts stunned and livid, “this was not part of the plan.”

“Proceed, Troika,” the voice repeated. “Then begin the procedure for reentry.”

Borodin lifted her hand, as if to smash it down upon the com, but stopped herself. It would have been useless. They would still be listening. They were always listening.

“I’m afraid,” Monelev said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, “that ‘anomaly’ is a bit of an understatement." Then, more softly, "you've got this, comrade."

Kara felt a brief stab of admiration for him. That lunkish arrogance masked a kindness, one that didn’t show itself often, but it was there all the same. He took a deep breath and smiled at Kara.

“Shall we suit up then, Comrade Starikov?”

“There is another problem.” Borodin nodded to the right. “Look starboard."

Without the instruments, it was difficult to find your bearings in orbit, to know if you were ascending or descending, but through the thick glass, they could see that the craft was clearly sinking, and into the center of something violent.  It was, Kara realized, a graveyard of debris, old ships of Soviet and American origin. She saw the irradiated hull of a Sputnik satellite, one which should have burned up upon reentry years ago, bathed in an eerie green glow. Then, an Explorer 3, tumbling precariously close to the craft, and all of these objects haloed by the energy that was now gathering around their own ship.  She glanced up to see Monelev holding his hand to his face, not in fear of what was out there. He was blinking at it, incredulous. 

“You see?" he whispered, "now I know this isn’t real because I nicked myself badly enough to almost bleed out the day before the launch. Had to go to the medic about it.” He opened his palm and showed it to them. “There’s no scarring. Nothing.”

Kara stared at him, unable to answer. Whatever was happening to her was affecting her comrades as well. On a smaller scale, but their bodies were healing, being nourished by the same energy. 

“Ilsa,” she said, her voice trembling, “h-how are you feeling?”

“Furious,” Borodin said. She ignored Monelev and strapped herself more securely into her seat. "I'm going to try--"

“No,” Kara said, “I mean—"

There was a violent shudder as something smacked against the side of the craft. Monelev braced himself, then he pushed his way toward the cargo bay.  

“I’ll check the payload,” he said, “status?”

“Status is a precarious term right now,” Borodin said. She began scanning the gauges. “Fire suppression system is activated. Oxygen levels are stable, but we need to get out of here, comrades. Now.” She leaned over the COM, her voice thick with anger. “Samovar, we’re in trouble here. I hope you are getting all this. The maneuver is no longer viable. Permission to abort.”

A voice, almost like an echo of the previous message, said, “Proceed as planned.”

“I don’t think you heard me the first time, Samovar. Repeat. The mission is no longer viable. Permission to abort!”

This time there was no answer, and Borodin spat out a series of expletives that would certainly get her demoted. She began punching furiously at the controls. “Help me out here, Starikov,” she said.

Kara moved quickly into her seat, placing her hands on the portside toggle as Borodin entered a sequence of commands. 

“I’m going to override TsUP,” Borodin said, “That’ll take the two of us. You remember the procedure?” Kara nodded and Borodin reached up, pressed a blinking red button above her, then shot a glance at Kara. Kara moved through the process automatically, using her training to shut herself off, for that thing that was gripping her consciousness, her body, was telling her to stay. To _stay_.

“Try the sequence. We’ll have to shift up out of this mess before we—” The pilot looked at Kara’s hands. Kara had moved through the sequence expertly, pushed the switch that would activate manual steering, but the instrument was locked rigidly in place. This time, Borodin brought her fist down on the COM. “It’s not allowing me to override orbital maneuvering.” She pushed herself up in her seat and frowned at the gauges. The Zvezda was still sinking into the vortex. And rapidly.

She expelled a breath and leaned over the COM. One more time. “Samovar, I am speaking for all of us, comrades. You must let us abort!”

This time, there was an answer.

“Complete the maneuver first. There is not much time.”

Kara locked eyes with Borodin. The anger was gone now. The pilot's expression was anguished and apologetic. “I am sorry, Kara. I doubt they truly intend to assist us any further, but it is the only way.”

Kara nodded and pressed the pilot's hand. "We'll make it, comrade. Make yourself ready."

She was rising from her seat when a flicker of blue light caught her eye.

"Ilsa?" 

The two of them looked up, saw the faint digital readout curl across the screen, a wisp of smoke and hope. 

_Manhunter sends regards. Try this one. 0.1.427. 613._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Altering history here. As Carol Danvers' mentor can attest, no one among the Mercury 13 went up, and this was partly due to Jackie Cochran's congressional testimony. As mentioned in earlier chapter notes, Leonov stepped out in ’65. The space hypnosis incidents are loosely based on “Too Far from Home,” Chris Jones' wonderful book about the astronauts who found themselves stranded aboard the ISS after the Columbia disaster.


	35. Empty Rooms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst ahoy, but we're getting to the fun part. Thank you so much for reading.

 

_I turned the lights off_  
To see more clearly  
I felt the winter, in my heart  
The night is fallen  
There's no one near me  
I heard a whisper, in the dark  
Why is this strangely familiar  
Haven't I been here before  
Whose is the voice that I'm hearing, so clearly  
I'm not alone anymore 

Elizaveta Khripounova 

Alex winced as she bent to put more wood into the stove. Her muscles were stiff from the long train ride back from the city, and an icy rain had settled on the taiga, provoking an ache in her joints. She pressed her hand against her lower back as she returned to her desk,  atop which newspaper clippings lay like scraps of drab and colorless fabric.

She’d hadn’t known what to expect from her trip to Novosibirsk. She had hoped her suspicions would not be confirmed with such horrifying clarity. But the radiation over the taiga was changing the flora and fauna, and changing the people who ingested them, altering their cells, and possibly, their genetic makeup. That those changes seemed beneficial brought her little comfort. As Eliza had told her many times over, there was always a dark side to a miracle. And there was another reason, for the confirmation of her suspicions had also slipped another overarching piece of her life into place.

On the desk was a yellowed 1939 feature from Pravda, an article praising—no, gushing over—the advancements made in agriculture by Trofim Lysenko. In a year, that saw hundreds of thousands die of famine, in the year her father and her sister had disappeared, Lysenko was being held up as the future of Soviet agriculture.

And with what evidence? Despite the barefoot scientist’s disdain for peer-review, his contempt for his colleagues at the Academy of Sciences, he was rarely if ever questioned. Those who did went to the gulags. 

Lysenko did not believe in genetics. Mendel, the good friar, was deluded by his religion and only Lamarckian inheritance was the answer.  One could imbue certain traits in both plants and animals, Lysenko claimed, acclimatize the seeds by freezing them, so that the next generation might sprout easily in colder climes. And Stalin wanted quick answers, the promises of fast results that real science couldn’t offer. Lysenko had offered him the good news of bluster and ideology informed pseudoscience, and it had kept him in power. Long enough to do dismantle the Soviet science, to murder people either directly or through starvation, even enough for Anatol Sheshkov to use her father’s work in a smear campaign against her, to demote her when she continued her research into genetics. All the cruelty and the absurdity. There had to be something else driving it, at least a sliver of support to ‘back up’ that ‘barefoot scientist’s’ promises.

And now, Alex feared she had discovered it.

She ran a thumb over photo of Comrade Stalin surveying the fruits of Lysenko’s experimentation. The article described them as ‘golden shafts of wheat, crisp apples,’ and a ‘miracle fruit’ the scientist claimed to have cultivated in one of Russia’s harshest climates. “These seeds have lain dormant under the Tunguska permafrost,” he boasted, “Now I have orchards of it growing in Kamchatka. It flowers so brightly there, you might not even know it’s winter.”

Alex had stared at that photo, recognized the eerie sheen of light that , despite the graying newsprint, seemed to emanate from the fruit. This must have been Lysenko’s insurance. The magic bullet he would put to use for decades, keeping him in Stalin’s favor, while most who enjoyed proximity to the man were shot or sent to Siberia.

She stood up and went to the kitchen, pouring herself a generous shot of vodka. As she downed it, a phrase came back to her, one that over the years had returned with haunting regularity.

_The key is in the mundane._

Maggie had said that once, and it had stayed with her. Everything about Maggie stayed with her.

There’d been a morphine thief at the hospital, someone snatching only small amounts, but the staff had been desperate to find the culprit before NKVD got wind and used it as an excuse to hang an entire ward. She remembered venting about it, taking Maggie up to the storage room to steal a kiss. Maggie took one look around the room and pointed to a fortochka set high in the window.

“It’s not an inside job.”

Alex glanced at her incredulously. “We’re four stories up, Masha. Who could climb up here, much less fit through that opening?”  


Maggie shrugged. “A sniper. Easily.”

Alex and Doctor Gregorov had lain in wait that night, only to be rewarded by the entrance of Katya Karenin, a decorated war hero with a 107 kill count, pushing her thin frame through the window. Karenin stayed calm and didn’t attempt to flee. She kept her voice steady as she explained she’d been delivering it to an encirclement. There were wounded there. Unable to escape. She’d been sneaking past the German lines, bringing what she could.

“Approach me directly next time,” Gregorov had said, “or you’ll have the NKVD nipping at our asses.”

Katya Karenin nodded and was gone. Alex watched her with mild awe as she shimmied out the window and proceeded to scale the wall like a bat. But her real awe was reserved for Maggie.

 _The key is in the mundane._ _You’ll find that’s true with a lot of things, Danvers._

That had been before the fight that separated them, before Maggie’s battalion was shipped out on that freezing afternoon. After that argument, Alex had locked up her feelings and poured herself into her work. But she was always glancing up, from a wound or an instrument, her eyes seeking a tuft of raven hair beneath a cap, an oversized greatcoat hanging loosely over those strong yet tender hands. 

Was that anger misguided? Was it wrong to distrust Maggie’s intentions? She had lost her father, too, after all, and although he was one of them, she should not have begrudged her the right to grieve. Perhaps that grief had twisted her emotions, made her defensive about a thing that was so clearly indefensible? At night these questions lingered, brought her to tears in that draughty room she shared with no one but her memories. 

And she should have expected it. The Germans were in retreat, throwing their forces into Stalingrad. It was more than time to move on. She had stepped out one night into the wintry Moscow streets to see a caravan of trucks rumbling past. They were packed with soldiers, their faces marked with the false bluster of men who had lost their reprieves. 

A young man dodged out of her way as she hurried across the street. 

“What is this?” she said. 

He didn’t stop, but turned toward her, running backward as he called out. 

“Orders,” he said, “all reserve regiments are moving out.” 

“All of them?” she asked, but the boy didn’t hear. He was huffing to catch up with a jeep that was slowing to meet him. 

_Maggie._

Without thinking, Alex began shoving her way through the crowd. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t just take her away like that. She was still wounded, she was— 

Tears stung her face as she ran, the air like glass in her lungs. When she reached the barracks, she saw men and women hurriedly tossing their duffels into the backs of trucks before being helped inside by their comrades. A captain stood on the stairs and barked at them to hurry. 

“Fritz won’t wait all day, citizens!” he yelled. “This isn’t a banya. Get your arses in gear!” 

Alex scanned the chaos for Maggie and then hurried up the steps into the barracks. 

“Women’s quarters for the 27th,” she shouted at a passing lieutenant. He raised his eyebrows and thumbed toward a winding flight of stairs. “Don’t think anyone’s around anymore, but you can try.” 

Her heart sank when she reached the top. The lights in the corridor were out, and her steps echoed loudly in the silence as she made her way through the dark. 

There was more of it in the room, save a shaft of grey light through one of the undraped windows, the place was dim and bare, the beds made, the homey clutter of keepsakes plucked from mirrors and dressers.  She choked back a sob, dizzy with loss and regret and felt her knees buckle. 

“I…I’m sorry…” 

There was the sound of something heavy but soft hitting the bed and she turned. Maggie was there, her uniform pressed and new. She had dropped her duffel bag and was taking off her hat as she came toward her. 

“I waited,” she said, her voice breaking. “I waited for as long as I could. There wasn’t enough time for me to get to you.” 

Alex felt herself breaking as she sank into Maggie’s arms. Her voice was a sob, alien and lost. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—” 

Maggie silenced her with a long and desperate kiss. It was hungry, as if they were packing those weeks of separation into a fraught and final gesture.   

“I—” Alex said, and felt Maggie’s fingers press over her mouth, gentle but firm. The other woman tendered a smile, her voice a whisper. A promise. 

“I need to say it first,” she said. “I love you, Alex Danvers. I think I’ve loved you since that day on the boat.” 

Alex closed her eyes, taking in the words as the tears streamed down her face. She opened her mouth to return them, but Maggie pulled her into another kiss. When they came up for air, she buried her face in Maggie’s hair and whispered it. Softly. Quietly. As if not to disturb whatever providence had granted them this brief sliver of time. 

“I love you. I’ll always love you.” 

They stood like that for a long moment, swaying in that silence, their arms wrapped tightly around each other as if willing their bodies to merge. Then Maggie pressed her lips to Alex’s forehead. 

“I’ve got to go or they’re gonna court-martial me. It might be worth it.” She smiled and wiped a tear from Alex’s cheek. “Write to me?” 

Alex nodded, trying to smile in concert. “Long letters, with poetry and flower clippings and goddamned perfume. I promise.” 

Maggie laughed and kissed her again. “I’ve never gotten those before. It’ll be a first.” 

“Of many,” Alex said, hearing her voice break again. Then Maggie pulled back, her face wet, but her eyes shining with warmth.  She reached up and tucked a strand of Alex’s hair behind her ear. “This isn’t goodbye, Danvers. I promise.” 

Alex closed her eyes and nodded as the ache rose in her chest. Then Maggie pulled something from her pocket and pressed it into Alex’s hands. “I was going to leave this at the Komsomol for you if you hadn’t come.” 

It was an envelope. Alex wiped her hands on her trousers and carefully tore the seal. Inside was a letter and photograph of Maggie in her new uniform, along with a fragment of the golden braid from her old one. 

“Whenever you’re lonely or feeling lost,” Maggie said. “When you haven’t heard from me, I want you hold this to your heart and remember. I’m with you. I’ll always be with you.” 

They kissed one more time, wet and warm and vulnerable, before the sound of hurried footfall drew them apart. Alex started as the door swung open and a corporal leaned his head into the room. 

“There you are, Rodaski. Captain wants you up front. Oleg is a shit driver in this weather.” 

“Coming!” Maggie waved him off, but he stood there, his feet planted, and she parted from Alex reluctantly. She sighed and hoisted the duffel over her shoulders, and then donning her cap, she let her hand brush Alex’s as she made her way to the door. Before it closed, she turned and gave Alex that dazzling grin— as if she was merely stepping out for a cigarette. 

“See you around, Danvers." 

Alex pushed down the memory. _Focus on the present. You’re trying to distract yourself._

She could write to Krimov, ask if he could meet her where she might be able to explain. But it had been years since she’d seen him, and he was settled now, with a family and a safe position at a university. The person she most wanted to talk to was Eliza. They’d been writing to each other frequently. Stalin’s death had lifted some of the restrictions on communication with the outside world, but Alex had no doubts about those letters being read.

Two years ago, before Alex had taken the doctor’s post in Siberia, Eliza had attempted to get them out via East Germany. She had connections, people with safehouses, forgers, but the timing could not have been worse.  A week before they were to depart, the wall went up and Eliza’s forger draped a blanket over a newly installed barbed wire fence and hopped from a third story window, the bullets whistling over his head.

 

 _“Stay strong, Alex,”_ Eliza had written, “ _we will see one another again, and know that I am heartened you aren’t forcing yourself into a life that doesn’t fit you. When you first told me of the adoption, I worried about your raising a child on your own, but you were always so much more capable than I could allow myself to admit, Alex. You were smarter, more resourceful, better than any son—or son-in-law.  But it is my dearest hope that you are not alone. I am not certain of how to put this to you, and perhaps it is impertinent, but should you find a less traditional happiness, I hope your circumstances, and more importantly, your trust, might allow you to share it with me._

_Alex, my dearest child, I have missed so much of your life._

Alex had slumped into her chair and immediately set to replying, tears of gratitude and relief blotting the page.

_And I have missed yours, mother. I am without a partner, but thanks to your words, much less alone now. I do get out, but even in Leningrad, the alternatives are few. I have attended what we might call ‘literary salons’ but I’m afraid I don’t quite fit there either. There’s an orthodoxy, understandable with so much secrecy and duress, but it would make Comrade Stalin’s ghost feel lenient by comparison. And even among those women, there is pressure to marry for appearances. They claim it is in the interest of protecting both husband and wife, but in many of these arrangements the men take license to live as freely as they did while placing more pressure on their wives to conform. That is no life for me or for Jami, and we are well despite things. She often asks about you and your research, and of course, complains of my cooking. She wants to know when you’ll be joining us._

 _I hope one day, we will be joining you._

There was a flash of light and Alex shot up, peering through the window to see a gash of brightness set the tree line to flickering. She heard a muffled shout, the cry of a man somewhere in the wilderness. She folded up the clippings and stowed them in a box under a plank in the floor before proceeding to Jami’s room.  She knocked lightly, noting the absurdity. If the thunder hadn’t woken her, Alex’s timid rapping certainly wouldn’t do the trick, but she respected the girl’s privacy, the trust that had taken so long for her to earn.

“Jami?” she said, knocking more loudly this time. There was no answer. Alex hesitated until there was another bright flash, followed by a thunderclap that rattled the cottage.

“Sorry,” she said and pushed the door open. “You all right? This is going to be a bad one.”

She expected to see the girl sitting up, startled and grousing about ‘not being a child anymore’ and asking if Alex was ‘chicken’ but the room was empty. Alex turned slowly, heart dropping as she saw her daughter’s coat was gone from the rack.

 _Jami,_ _what did you do?_

She snatched her own and hurried to the front door, hastily slipping into her boots as she pulled it open. She was immediately buffeted by a blast of icy wind. She straightened and shielded her eyes, called out stupidly, helplessly, as shards of cold rain pricked at her hands, at her face.

“Jami? Hey! This is a really bad time for a prank!”

She was answered another flash, and what sounded like a mountain being split in half by an axe. Slowly, she glanced up at the sky, taking in the eerie glow that now illuminated the horizon. She heard the distant, panicked cries of the people, as they too, saw the sky was on fire. A hundred shards of light, trailing down through the darkness, a flurry of falling stars, as the anomaly seemed to shrink and expand, that eerie green clouded with red, dimming and then flickering violently. A fireball streaked overhead and Alex fell to her knees, hands clasping her ears as the explosion robbed her of consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lysenko stayed in his position at the Academy of Sciences until the early 1960s, but his loss of power and reputation began earlier with Stalin's death.


	36. The Banya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Major trigger warning in the endnotes. This was a difficult chapter to write.

The Obarani Banya was tucked into a narrow warren of sagging, wooden houses, and its neoclassical façade seemed to shoulder the structures around it. The Kavarosk district was known mainly for its black market booze, and more notably, its brothels--although officially _prostitutky_ did not exist under socialism.

However, the banya itself served another type of undesirable, its saunas and Grecian baths offering a perfect mix of intimacy and aloofness. It was here where one could learn about the private parties and dances in the capital, and if one was discreet, enjoy a moment with someone similarly inclined.

Maggie wasn’t looking for companionship, however. She came to get warm, to allow her mind and body to rest as she sweated out the vision of Covillev's lifeless eyes, the miasma of that bottling plant with its grotesque and sentient vegetation.

 “ _Aliens,” Olsen had said.  
_

“ _Meaning, alien aliens,” Maggie repeated. “Just so we’re straight here.”_

_Olsen nodded and glanced up nervously at the skylight. “Something bad happened where they’re from, something they didn’t have time to prepare for. So they sent their progeny. Nine of them. One went off course, landed in our neck of the woods._

_“KANSAS?” Maggie said._

_"Bingo," Olsen said, "his ship was damaged, so he didn’t stay in stasis like the others. Was raised by a farmer and his wife until Uncle Sam became aware of his presence. The others, from what we know, were taken by the Tsar’s men, then a few decades later, Lionel Luthor found a way to wake them up. Most of them, anyway.”_

_“And the others?” Maggie said. Olsen slipped his hands into his pockets. “That’s about as far as I can go."_

_“I think you can go further."_

_Olsen laughed. “You're going to put me on desk duty until retirement.” He reached up and scratched the back of his neck. “The seven we know of are human in appearance. Convergent evolution or maybe we’re related somewhere way back in the past, but they’re close enough to our species. Their civilization is how we might turn out in say, another thousand years if we don't nuke ourselves out of existence. But the other two…” He stared at her for a moment, his eyes suddenly distant with fear, "one of our extraction teams managed to excavate some leftover artifacts from the crash in Tunguska, found bits of one the things that didn’t make it.”_

_“Things,” Maggie said. "Enough with the vaguery. I'm a big girl."  
_

_“It was a hand or half of one because the rest of was in the process of becoming something else. One of the fingers was a talon, there were scales and suction cups, poisonous barbs that managed to finish one of our techs in thirty-seconds. It was like the thing was evolving itself in a panic as the ship exploded, making a last ditch effort to survive."_

_Maggie sucked in a breath, feeling her reality shift once more. "Is that what the others do? Can they shapeshift like that?"_

_"KANSAS couldn't," Olsen said. "We don't suspect the others can either. Instant immunity, invulnerability, strength--defensive adaptations to threats in the environment, but not like that. That thing was a weapon."  
_

Towel in hand, Maggie stepped into the soothing warmth of the main bathing area, the tiles warm against her feet. It was a Sunday night and the place was sparsely populated. She dipped a toe into the water, delighting in the scent of birch branches and soap as she lowered herself into its warmth. As she sank, she felt her muscles loosen, weeks upon weeks of vigilance seeping through her pores. 

She checked her hand, strangely happy to see the red line of the knife scar returning. Imagine a body reacting like that. Fixing every skinned knee or cut? That was one thing, but altering the body so that it would never happen again? Did that ‘healing’ ability extend itself to emotional pain? Did the aliens develop immunity to heartbreak?

She thought about her father and Eliza, the priest’s daughter who had first broken her heart. She thought of Emilia to whom she had done the same, and finally, Alex. Alex still hurt. She would always hurt, but Maggie would happily bear that pain for the rest of her life. Despite it all, it was tangible and real. Human.

She felt the water lap over her shoulders as someone else entered the pool. She would have ignored it if it weren’t for the other person's proximity. Instead, she sat up, her eyes locking with those of a young woman. She was close, almost nestling into her and Maggie let out a startled chuckle. 

“It’s a big pool,” Maggie said.

The girl was gamine-like yet muscular, with short dark hair and broad shoulders. She didn’t respond to Maggie's words but stayed motionless as the water shifted around them. Then she smiled and scooted closer. Maggie pushed away from the wall and turned, grabbing the girl gently by the wrist. "I uh, kind of like my space here."

The girl tilted her head as if she couldn’t quite understand, and Maggie felt a stab of sympathy and recognition.  She was probably some kid from a backwater who'd made it all the way to Moscow and now was eager for it.  Maggie had been there once. More than once. Awkward and lonely enough to allow some worldly older woman to take advantage of that need. She let go of her wrist and offered a smile. “Look, you're nice and all, kid, but this isn’t how it works. You’ve got to be discrete.”

The girl’s eyes trailed over Maggie’s body, taking in the mix of softness and muscle and scars, signs of a rough past and a rougher character. Then she reached out again, and locking her eyes with Maggie, slid a hand languidly up her leg. Maggie gasped, her body reacting to the touch, but she didn't resist at first. There was something mesmerizing in the girl’s movements, the kind of grace and natural economy she had only witnessed once during a performance of Giselle. 

The Bolshoi star Galina Ouskaya in her heyday. Galina Ouskaya who’d lured Maggie into her dressing room with a claim that her broach had been stolen. Galina Ouskaya who then took her on the chaise longue while a line of admirers waited on the other side of the door, oblivious, gloved hands clinging to the stems of wilting roses.

Maggie swallowed and steadied herself, then carefully placed her hand over the girl's as she drew it from her leg. The girl relented, watching Maggie's movements like a cat focused on a toy. 

“There are rules in this place,” Maggie said, “We don’t follow them and these nice people get raided. You want to see it taken over by fat old men from the Politburo?”

The girl smiled again, less innocently this time. “Magdalena Rodaski,” she said, “Code-named, ‘Sawyer.’”

 Maggie kept her expression level as she reached behind her for her towel.  “I guess I was being presumptuous."

She let the cloth drop partway in the water, then yanked it up to smack the girl with the water-soaked end. The girl was faster. She pounced on Maggie, legs wrapping around her like a vice as she pushed her under. Maggie gulped in a breath, hands struggling for purchase on the edge of the pool, but the girl yanked her arm down and then leaned over as she dunked her head, her lips and tongue forcing Maggie's mouth open, freeing the air from her lungs.

The girl's body was like a stone. Maggie kicked at the bottom of the pool, scratched at her, but her nails couldn’t seem to gain any traction. She’d been in hand-to-hand combat often, rough bouts with both men and women, but as her mind reeled from the lack of oxygen, she knew this was something different. Inhuman. She watched as the last bubbles of air trailed from her lips, the young woman above her, haloed in the light on the water's surface, until a shadowy figure overtook them both. 

 #

Maggie woke, limp and shivering, a robe tossed hastily over her naked form. She was still at the banya, in one of the private 'meeting rooms,' her attacker was nowhere to be seen. 

Instead, another woman stood over her. She was older and statuesquely beautiful, with a streak of white in her long auburn hair. Maggie sat up, coughing a stream of water down her chest as the woman hurried to pull the robe back over her body.

“You took long enough to wake,” she said, slapping a comradely hand on her back. Maggie coughed again and wiped her mouth. She straightened took her in, her eyes regaining focus. She wore high leather boots and a denim jacket--as if she’d just ridden into town on a horse.

 “You American?” 

The woman snorted. “Spent more than my share of time in that Yahooville, but no, I am not.”

Maggie yanked off the robe and stood and the woman turned away, her arms folded.  

“You’ve better manners than your friend,” Maggie said, slipping her arms into the sleeves of the robe. She pulled it around her and tied the sash. “Who the hell was she?”

 “A misunderstanding,” the woman said.

As if on cue, the girl appeared at the entrance, her face flushed and her eyes firmly on the floor. She was carrying a silver tray laden with vodka and caviar. 

“Making it up to me?” Maggie said.

“Thank you, Faora,” the woman said; then she turned to Maggie and said “sit” with such firmness that she found herself doing as she was told. She lowered herself into a wicker chair and watched cautiously as the girl placed the tray on a table in front of her and sat, her expression penitent and somewhat befuddled. She folded her hands in her lap and did not meet Maggie’s eyes.

“So,” Maggie said, “what did she misunderstand? That I like it rough?”

The woman sauntered over and poured three shots of vodka. “First, a peace offering, so we can drop all the nonsense.” 

"Fair enough," Maggie said.

The woman pushed the glasses in front of them, and the three lifted them in a toast. When they'd downed the first shot, the woman directed her gaze toward the girl. “Faora? Perhaps you’d best explain yourself.”

The girl looked up and met Maggie's eyes. Maggie could see bluish knots at her knuckles as she squeezed her hands into fists. “I am sorry, Lieutenant Rodaski. I thought you killed Father Covillev." Her accent was rural and thick, Maggie noted. 

“Sawyer here's one of the good ones," the woman said, "despite what she thinks of herself."

Maggie shook her head. “Seeing as we’ve never met, I’m wondering how you came to that conclusion.”

The woman poured another round.  “You'd be surprised, but it really wasn't hard to dig up your history. You have a reputation for being a reformer, no torture, not even psychological. And you were nearly court-martialed for killing your own men during the rape of Berlin." She shuddered appreciatively before tossing back another shot. "You got lucky there.”

"You've a way with people, don't you?" Maggie said, reaching for the bottle as that ugliest of memories resurfaced. They’d made their way into a small village on the outskirts of Berlin. The Germans had yet to announce their surrender, but the signs were all around. Uniforms, SS and infantry alike, tossed in the streets by deserters, the quiet and emptiness of the town with its houses boarded up or draped in blankets, white sheets hanging from the windows. They had been delayed on the road and were following another troop battalion, but despite the quiet, they made their way methodically through each building, looking for hold-outs, for food and supplies. That was when she'd come upon them, her own men, men she'd drunk with and whom she'd trusted with her life. They were sniggering, holding down a young woman, her skirt torn off and her bare legs kicking vainly at a corporal who was struggling to unbuckle his own belt. Maggie scanned the scene in horror, saw another woman, much older, huddling in the corner, her clothes torn and her face a mask of shock. 

She didn't think about it. She simply unholstered her gun and raised it. 

There hadn’t been a choice, really. Her comrades glanced up. She saw Bolkonsky, his face embarrassed but friendly. They all knew her after all. Rodaski would be a good sport about this. She saw Ivanov, the corporal struggling with his belt, as his brows drooped in confusion at her weapon, at the sound of the hammer being drawn back, the echo of gunfire as a neat hole claimed his temple. He slumped to his knees, eyes still open, his thumb still stupidly caught in his belt. The other two had dropped the girl, their hands reaching for their sidearms as Maggie fired again, hitting Avov in the stomach and Bolkonsky neatly between the eyes. She heard the older woman cry out and let her eyes drift briefly from the dead until the younger woman spat a warning in German. Avov lay writhing, one hand clutching his blood-soaked shirt as the other fumbled clumsily for his weapon. She remembered thinking that it must hurt to be shot in the gut, and that she would have liked for it to hurt a good while longer.  But the man was still conscious, his hand already around the grip. Maggie raised her gun again and fired. She didn't apologize. She had nothing to apologize for. 

After that, she remembered her hands shaking as she reholstered it, remembered bending mechanically to gather up the women's clothes. The older woman had hurried over and was kneeling beside her daughter, dispatching whatever comforts she could in German as she stroked the girl's hair. Maggie placed the pile of clothing in front of them and then removed her greatcoat, using it to blanket their shoulders. 

“You'd best dress quickly and be out of here," she said in Russian, "or they'll come for you as well." 

She didn't know if they understood. There was little she could do about that. But she had left them quickly, had made her way down the steps, scattered with broken glass and shrapnel, and turned herself into her commanding officer. Three nights passed without food or much water and not so much as a single interrogation. She knew what that meant. They'd make a quick job of her. Come in the night and have her tossed into a ditch by morning. 

Instead, the NKVD let her go. 

It was Gessen who came to her cell. She remembered glancing up, the light from the corridor burning her eyes. Gessen held up her coat and blocked it.

"The Gerstner women wanted to make sure this was returned to you," he said. He helped her into it as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Then he led her out onto the sunlit street. 

The men and women from her unit were there. All of them lined up, their uniforms neat, their buttons polished. Despite everything, would they give her a proper send-off? Was that what this was?

Then Gessen gripped her arm reassuringly and spoke. “This woman has been wrongly imprisoned. She isn’t to be court-martialed but commended. What those men did was a disgrace to the nation and the Soviet people, and unfortunately, far from an isolated case. I’m am therefore recruiting Lieutenant Rodaski," he turned to her, smiling, "once you've regained your strength, of course, to assist me in investigating similar cases of misconduct. And I can assure all of you that anyone caught abusing the civilian populace will receive the same treatment she gave those men.”

Maggie still didn’t know if Gessen’s motives were true, if she wasn’t being used to mitigate the disgraceful accounts that were making their way to allied reporters. She knew that Gessen saw himself as a surrogate father to her, and in the duress of the war and her long separation from Alex, she had gradually accepted him as such. He was, after all, a gentler man, much kinder than Oskar had ever been, and although he never said it directly, he saw her difference as a point of strength. But whatever his intentions, her fate and reputation were locked in. She would become a tool of propaganda, a righteous executioner for a system in which she no longer believed.

Maggie closed her eyes and downed another shot. She needed to quell her anger. This woman had gotten a rise out of her, but her little girlfriend could snap Maggie's neck in an instant if she wanted. "I think," she said to the woman, "if you know that much, then I'm at least owed an introduction."  

The woman nodded, as if to say 'fair enough' and stood the tiny shot glass on her knee. “You may call me Astra,” she said, “Astra Imzeyevna, but the last name would only confuse you. It’s always changing, you see.” 

She clamped an affectionate hand on Faora's shoulder. “Hers, too. You've had a lot of different names, haven't you, little one? So many people trying to take you away from me and dissect you in a lab." 

The girl gave Astra a horrified look, and Astra winced sympathetically, her hand cupping Faora's cheek. The girl smiled again.  

"Ah, there it is," Astra said, her fingers tracing the girl's jaw, "'a bright smile flutters upon her lips.'" 

Maggie recognized the line from _Eugene Onegin_. _The worldly older woman,_ she thought. _I see you._

Astra returned her attention to Maggie. "All this girl wants is to go home, and Covillev promised he would get her there. So when he died, well, you can see why she'd be upset." She shrugged. "A misunderstanding. I told her that of course, you had nothing to do with it. For you, my dear Lieutenant, are her last and only hope."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for references to rape (not of Maggie or another major character). Maggie (not the perpetrator) also commits an act of violence in response. I hope this doesn't sour you on the story but will understand if you choose not to go any further. This was a horrific chapter of the war that I felt shouldn't be ignored and one that was equally important to Maggie's character arc. The Red Army assaulted some 2,000,000 women during their occupation of Germany, with little done or acknowledged until it became politically expedient. In many cases, that took decades.


	37. Rao's Gladsome Rays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revising in sprints, so a short one for now. More on the way soon.

Monelev caught Kara’s gaze across the trellis and gave a nervous half-smile. They were outside, trying to dump the payload, as Borodin desperately input the code sent through the Argon. The chaos and sense of panic inside the craft had been replaced by the soundlessness of space, the storm of objects and flotsam whirled around them silently, ushering the craft into its descent.  

Below them, rents in the vortex revealed small patches of the Siberian tundra below. Monelev said nothing, for they were being listened to, but his eyes spoke clearly enough.

_Did you think it would be like this? Did you know?_

Kara averted her gaze and focused on the payload. She could call it what it was now, a clean-up operation, and to Lillian’s mind, a strange kind of peace offering—one Kara dreaded had been tendered far too late.

“The inscriptions warned us that ‘a sleeper,’ Lillian had said, “would awaken to destroy us should harm come to your people.” She clasped gloved fingers over her wrist and rubbed at it absently. Her arthritis had gotten worse over the years and she now wore gloves to hide the bandages soaked in healing salves. Kara wondered now in retrospect how Lillian’s pain had shaped Lena, if it had informed the coldness she bore toward her daughter. Of course, this was before Kara had gotten to know Lena, and she cursed herself for not remembering all of what Lillian had said about her, those brief mentions of a ‘daughter who was too smart for everyone’ whose appreciation for art and music and literature bordered on subversion. She wanted to know more about Lena's childhood, about the books and the music she loved. 

“My husband didn’t listen,” Lillian continued. ‘They’re long gone,’ he said, ‘how will they make due on their threat?’ Lionel thought we could harness you and the others…that _thing_ as weapons.”

“I am not a killer,” Kara said. She thought of Non, of those cold grey eyes, but forced out the rest. “They weren’t either.”

Lillian snorted and lowered her head, then raised her eyes abruptly enough for Kara to startle. “Just the Germans, I suppose.”

“That’s different,” Kara spat.

Lillian smiled. “Oh, Kara. We all have that potential, and you know it. But no, you and _it_ aren’t built the same. I’ve gathered up the Mansi prophecies, read the inscriptions in your native tongue and they offer up a vision far worse than anything John of Patmos could have imagined.”

Kara closed her eyes, the image of her world burning flashed before her. Was it possible? Was there anything left?

“Plagues, fire, war,” Lillian said, “even with our atomic toys, it’s child’s play. What they offer is conscious obliteration, slavery under a distant star. We shall be transformed. Incorporated. Dead in life.” She pointed a gloved finger at Kara. “So we’ll send that thing back to where it came from, and you, Kara, will be our little peace offering.”

 

All she had to do was let go, release the payload into the vortex and detach her own tether from the Zvezda, and follow it into the unknown. She could feel the energy tugging at her, its light thrumming through her cells, beckoning with a song that only she could hear. It was affecting Monelev and Borodin as well, healing their injuries, boosting the vitality and alertness that she hoped would help see them to safety. But unlike them, she knew she could survive out here. She was made for it. 

She would follow TsUP’s orders, see Monelev safely back inside and close the hatch. J’onn’s override code would allow Borodin to take control of the craft. They would make it out safely. They had to. And then she would…

_Are you happy?_

Her own words came back to her. The feel of Lena’s warm skin against her fingers.

Lena had pressed her face into Kara’s palm and answered.

_Yes._

She squeezed her eyes shut. _No. You will ruin this. You will destroy everything you’ve worked for, the answers to who you are, what you are becoming. She is not your home. She is n--_

“Shall we?” Monelev said.

Kara nodded _,_ and on a count of three, they unlatched the fetters and like lonely pallbearers, pushed the payload out into the waiting expanse.

It made no sense for it to sink like that, as if she and Monelev were children, dropping a stone from a bridge. But it fell, and fell fast, shrinking until an iridescent ripple announced it had hit bottom. Had met resistance. Streaks of light spread across the surface, their brightness intensifying, spidering up as if she and Monelev hung at the top of a cracked glass. Something flitted past her, and she turned to Monelev, heard the impact through the COM as something smacked against the craft.

 “Comrades,” Borodin said. “We must hurry!” Kara signaled to Monelev, but he was still at the drop point, blinking into the void.

 “Larya,” she said, using his diminutive. He was leaning back, trying to focus on a familiar star formation in the pocket of clear space overhead.

“Smart boy,” she whispered. “Stay.” She pushed herself along the trellis until she got to him.

 _There is still time._   _I need to make sure he’s safe._

“Come on, Larya,” she said, “We’ll get you home where you can have some bubbly. Play a few rounds of Durak.”

She heard another tearing sound and felt the vibration of the trellis as it bounced against the impact. She looked around them. The objects were falling all around the craft, sinking, the rents in the fabric of the vortex opening to reveal patches of the frozen earth below.

“Debris! Incoming!” Borodin shouted. “We need to move!”

“Coming!” Kara said.

_No, no, no. I’m going to make it._

Kara slipped the bulky arm of her suit around Monelev’s neck, and like a swimmer pulling a drowning man to safety, tugged him toward the hatch.

It was easy, not simply due to the weightlessness, but the strength now coursing through her. She doubted she even needed the suit.

She positioned Monelev at the hatch, and gently pushed him inside, head first. Kara was supposed to have gone before him, but Monelev didn’t protest. He was barely holding himself together now, his breath rapid, creating patches of condensation on his visor. Kara was glad the bulk of their suits made it impossible for both of them to enter at once. It made things easier. This separation. When his feet were past the threshold, she reached over and keyed in the code on the outer control panel.

“Are you inside?” Borodin said. “We’ve no more time. We’re going to have to attempt a ballistic descent.”

For an instant, Kara looked down, saw the teeming colors in the glow that expanded around them, saw the tundra below as the vortex self-destructed.

 “We’re in!” Kara said, watching as the hatch closed, as the remaining sliver of light from within the craft, thinned and was finally extinguished. “Proceed, Comrade Borodin. We are both safe.”

She held to the side of Zvezda for a moment and whispered a brief prayer. One for the world she was about to enter. And one for her past.

 _Though we go forth alone, our soul unites us under Rao’s gladsome rays._ __  
We’re never lost, never afraid for we shrink not under the Sun of Righteousness.  
Rao binds us to those we love.

_To those we love._

_I am sorry, Lena.  
_

Then, before her comrades became cognizant of her lie, she switched off the communication link and pushed herself out into the void. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Larya comes from Lar Gand, Mon-El's name in the comics, which the show stupidly decided to give to his father, and which made no sense just as Mon-El having a Kryptonian name (and Kara's family name to boot) made no sense. I think there's an algorithm locked in that naming decision that explains all the writing decisions made on the show.


	38. ##### Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy May Day, comrades! Thanks for reading!

Jami lay huddled on her side, eyes closed to the darkness, ears still ringing from the din of the storm. That hadn’t been a dream. The forest. The wolf. The man who had set upon her as fire rained from the sky.

Alex had been adamant about her staying in, avoiding the forest, but she had told herself it wasn’t really disobeying if she was helping her mother.Her mother had been exhausted after the trip to Novosibirsk, her demeanor wan and unsettled, which made her secrecy all the more frustrating. 

Jami, after all, had seen those things first, for Lenin’s sake and she had made it clear how much she hated being treated like a child. It had been a long road to finding a comfortable affection between them, one that grew as Alex acknowledged her independence. She understood though, why her mother felt the urge to protect her. It was a comfort, a compensation for what she had lost. Her father, that strange sister she spoke of sometimes, and...someone else. Not her husband, but a woman. Alex never spoke of her directly, but Jami had sensed her presence like a ghost, and one morning, she found the photograph in the drawer, the letters they had sent each other during the war. In one, the woman was apologetic, telling Alex of being sent away by her father. She asked Alex’s forgiveness for how she'd acted upon his death. Jami had felt an odd wave of guilt then and put the letters back where she'd found them, but she wondered what had happened to her, why those letters had ceased, why the woman was no longer in Alex's life. 

Alex told Jami that her ignorance would keep her safe if the wrong people came asking. But to Jami, who endured the taunts of the village girls, and the disapproving stares of teachers and party elders who disliked her recalcitrance, the wrong people were just about everywhere.

She didn't think much about what Alex meant by wrong. Hadn't expanded it to anything dangerous. 

Jami had seen the clippings in Alex's study, of the strange vegetation and odd crystalline structures. She remembered spotting something similar while exploring the Orlov caves, crystalline formations that clung to the cave walls, emitting an eerie and ethereal light. She had written them off as fungus, at first, had left the cave that day as her pioneer troop gathered to leave. But if she could collect one of them and bring it back to her mother, she might be closer to solving whatever was that was eating at her, and maybe, she'd trust Jami with more of what she knew.

She was a few hours into her journey when the sky lit up, and that brightness stretched across the expanse. She dropped to her knees, the snow seeping into already rain-soaked trousers as the glow intensified.

 _Is this it?_ she thought. _The Americans with their bombs?_

There was another flash as the ground trembled, a cracking sound as a tree above burst into flames. She took in the heavens, gaping as they broke apart and fell to earth, bright comets of fire whistling downward, hot stones and shards of metal battering at the frost and mud. She pushed herself up and began to run. The caves were the closest source of shelter. The air dragged in her lungs as she stumbled, and hopped over chunks of smoldering debris. She was almost at the mouth when she heard a shout, saw the man pointing his revolver in her face.

“Halt!”

It was a soldier, in full battle gear and a papakha. She placed her hands behind her head and sank once again to her knees. To the man’s left was a roundish object centering a shallow impact crater. Not a meteorite, she thought, but something with structure, human-made. The rain hissed and spit off its surface as it made contact with the burning metal.  

“I am only…” she breathed, “I am only seeking shelter.”

The man said nothing. With his free hand, he plucked a walkie-talkie from his belt. 

"It's child, Koslawa, please advise."

There was no answer. Jami nodded at the object. The hatch was torn off, and inside, she could see what looked like a small compartment, too small for this man, perhaps. 

Another explosion. Dangerously close. A tree branch caught fire, snapping off its trunk and trailing a line of flame through the darkness.

“Were you inside that?” she asked, unable to resist the question. "Did you come from up there?" But she knew the answer. The man wasn't wearing one of those famous jumpsuits of the cosmonauts, but a uniform--the accouterments of death, not exploration. 

He steadied his gun, then pressed his ear to the reciever.

“It’s a girl, Koslawa, do you copy?”

 A voice emerged from the box. "That makes no difference. Finish her.”

Jami’s heart rabbited. Definitely the wrong people.

The man stepped forward but lowered his gun. His voice cracked like a twelve-year-old boy's. “Repeat. She is a child. A girl.”

“No witnesses. No bystanders. The village is under containment. Anyone breaching the perimeters must be dealt with.”

Jami rose slowly, not wanting to startle him. “Comrade, I am lost," she said in her sweetest, most childlike voice. "I can't find my mother."

He raised his gun again and began backing away. “Get back! I'm ordering you!”

“You have ten seconds, Boris. if you don’t, I'll come there and do it myself. I would hate to have to add you to my tally. Ten…nine…”

The man's expression tensed, a trickle of saliva worried his bottom lip. He pulled back the hammer on his gun. 

“eight…seven…”

Jamie made to run, expecting to hear gunfire, feel the ping of hot metal in her back, but a shadow, compact and four-legged flitted past her, toppling the man to the ground. Jami followed its arc as it leaped at him, the man screaming, trying to loosen the jaws now buried in his neck. Jami watched, dazed, as he tried to position the gun at the animal's head, at its stomach, but each time it snarled and jerked his body with such violent force and his hand dropped away. She wanted to get a better look, but it was too fast, like a djinn or a devil from a fairytale. The man grabbed the animal by the neck, pressing the pistol against its temple, only to scream as its teeth tore into his flesh and a shower of red spattered the snow. 

_You got lucky,_ she thought. _Leave it! Go!_

She turned and hurried toward the waiting mouth of the cave; as she ran, she heard the sound of gunfire. Once. And then silence.

Now, she lay in the darkness, her body aching, her ears singing with pain. It had not been a dream. She really had been that foolish. 

She sat up as her eyes adjusted to the meager light. Her mother would be worried, but Jami, too now found she feared for Alex. Whatever had rained down on the taiga last night was spread over a broad area, and those men. There were more of them. She reached down, trying to find purchase on the wet stone, but then her fingers found something else. 

Warmth and damp and soft matted fur.

 _Bohzhe moi._ Her heart came up through her throat. A bear's den. It had to be. "I am done for," she whispered as a cold, wet nose nuzzled against her fingers.  
She scooted away as the animal pressed its face into her knees. Was it a cub? If that was the case, she'd be mauled by its mother in an instant. Torn apart. She leaned forward, willing her eyes to look, hearing a clean gust of air escape her lungs as she finally saw what it was.

A dog. 

A mutt and a friendly one at that. It nestled closer to her, resting its chin on her legs as if willing her not to go. A harness with wires emerging from the breastplate dug painfully into its small body. 

“Hello there, little one,” she said. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

As she spoke, it regarded her calmly, its warm brown eyes evincing a sharp and almost otherworldly intelligence. Was this the animal that had saved her life? Had it, after dispatching with her would-be executioner, followed her into the cave?

She pulled a small flashlight from her jacket pocket and traced the beam over its body. It was a bitch, small and compact, with drooping ears and a silvery coat. Part Husky, she decided. The other part she couldn't name. 

“That can't be comfortable,” she said, pulling a small knife from her pocket. “Give me a moment. I’m quite good at this."

The dog stood patiently as she inserted the end of the knife into the lock on the breastplate, turning it until she heard the telltale click. She snapped the small latch open and loosened the harness. The dog shuddered, sending up a mist of rainwater and fur. 

"That better?" she said, massaging the fur where the restraints had been tightest. "You look hungry, too. Which is good because so am I. Come. I'll repay you with mother’s cooking? It’s not very good, but there is meat. And butter. You like those things, don't you?"

The dog licked her hand in response, and Jami smiled and stroked her behind the ears. Then, she hoisted her pack on her shoulders and stood, signaling for her to follow. 

Alex would protest, she knew, but the animal had saved her life. Twice, in fact, by keeping her warm as she lay unconscious in the cave. Whoever had restrained her was beyond cruel. It looked as if she had been part of some monstrous experiment, strapped to a table in a lab, or, Jami stopped at the realization—into a very small compartment. 

Jami turned back. The dog stopped, too, tilting its head up at her as if asking a question. 

"Do you mind?" Jami said. She bent over the animal, and not wanting to believe the absurdity of her suspicions, ran her fingers under the small cloth collar still encircling its neck. "We haven't been properly introduced."

She recognized the tag instantly. Its logo had been beaten into her head on postage stamps and at May Day parades, in her science textbooks, and on the chocolate bars passed out to children as rewards for good citizenship: A rocket with a hammer and sickle—and above it, an even more familiar name.  

"I see," she said, massaging the animal's neck. This was a better find than those crystals. "You're a dear, aren't you? Mother will be very surprised." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unlike the three-headed cat in Survival Tips (which I'm still cringing over), this was something I've been planning to do since the beginning. I thought it might be a little too whimsical but damn it, there must be a few historical fix-its in the mix. Reading Jeannette Winterson's Weight, in which Atlas plucks Laika from space and keeps her as an adviser, provided that last bit of impetus.   
> Laika wasn't her real name, apparently, but the public name given to her after the news of her launch and subsequent death. The real one was something like Gruzillda or Grushinka--Kudryavka, looked it up ( which sounds like something Alex would have come up with in that water tank) so yeah... we're sticking with Laika. 
> 
>  
> 
> #LesbianLives #LaikaLives


End file.
